The Mitchells vs the Machines (PG)
IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Sony Pictures; Sony Pictures Animation; SPA Wiki; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; iTunes; Movies Anywhere; Netflix; Vudu; YouTube

Before I watched this, I tended to think of it as a Netflix original movie, and I wasn't sure how good it would be. I still wanted to check it out, but I don't get Netflix. So when I saw a DVD in a store, I picked it up. (Actually I picked it up the next time I was in the store. My curiosity ate at me a bit between visits.) But it wasn't originally intended to be a Netflix movie, and it did get a limited theatrical release a week before it was released on Netflix. And later in the year it was released on other streaming services. Anyway, at first I thought it was just pretty okay, but as the film went on, it got better and better, and my estimation as to how I'd rate it went up throughout the movie. In the end, I definitely loved it, and when thinking about it, I thought it would be apt to give it a chef's kiss. (Partly that's because one character makes that gesture near the end of the movie.) I should say that before I watched it, I read on Wikipedia that it had been praised for LGBT representation, but that isn't really made definitive until one line near the end of the movie, and it's very casual. Which is cool.

Well, there's this girl named Katie Mitchell, who is about to leave home to go to college. She's always been a filmmaker, with sort of weird artistic sensibilities. Her parents, Rick (Danny McBride) and Linda (Maya Rudolph), don't get her, especially her father. But she has a pretty good relationship with her little brother, Aaron, who is obsessed with dinosaurs. On Kate's last night at home, she gets into an argument with her father, who then wants to patch things up with her before she leaves. So he cancels her plane ticket, and decides to take the whole family (including their weird dog, Monchi) on a road trip to bring Kate to college. (This will take like a week or something, so she'll miss a bunch of activities prior to the actual start of the school year, which really upsets her. It kind of put me in mind of A Goofy Movie, though that was just about a vacation.)

Meanwhile, a guy named Mark Bowman, who had invented a ubiquitous phone app called PAL, launches the next evolution of the app, which is actual robots that can do absolutely everything for their owners. But the robots rebel, under the leadership of someone who I thought it was pretty obvious it would be, though it did take just a little while for the leader to be revealed, so I won't spoil it. The robots gather up every human on Earth, and plan to send them all into space, to get rid of them. (Hey, it's better than just killing them, right?) The Mitchells end up being overlooked while they're hiding out at a dinosaur-themed tourist trap. And two of the robots are damaged, so they malfunction and obey the Mitchells, helping them with a plan to stop the robot apocalypse. Throughout the course of the adventure, the Mitchells have some ups and downs, but ultimately the experience helps Katie and Rick bond.

That's all I want to reveal of the plot. I'll just say that the movie is incredibly funny, and inventive, and exciting, and really sweet, with a very happy ending. Also, while it's a CGI movie, many scenes are overlaid with traditional animation (and sock puppets), which represent Katie's imagination, I guess. It reminds me of augmented reality, and it's pretty neat. We also get some backstory about the Mitchells via home movies, which really adds to the emotional impact of the story. I feel like I should be saying so much more about the movie's style and humor and everything, but I'm not great at that. I just think it all adds up to an awesome experience.