For the first twenty minutes, I legitimately loved The Mitchells vs. the Machines. It was about the family… it was sweet, it felt truthful, and I laughed out loud a number of times. I dug its visual style, the lead teenage girl was fun and feisty, I loved her relationship with her little brother, and the relationship between father and daughter felt real. And then the robot apocalypse happens and… well… I still enjoyed the movie, but it would have been better if it had stuck to the human story. Which is, admittedly, an odd thing to say about a sci-fi comedy for kids. It’s like saying Star Wars would have been great if not for all those blasters and droids.

So the film is about a teenage girl who is looking forward to her future in college. On a family road trip to see her off to school, a tech billionaire’s not-at-all-like-Siri personal assistant goes crazy and turns a newly built army of sleek white helper droids into an army of sleek white evil human-napping droids. Only the Mitchells – the weird weird Mitchells – remain free to stop the apocalypse.

And, yes, I laughed quite a bit at this movie’s kind of manic but also very sweet and honest vibe. It’s genuinely funny with a cool art style that kind of oozes modern meme culture (in a good way). The relationship between the family members is remarkably good and doesn’t feel cheap, simplistic, or thrown in to give the movie a faux emotional climax (unlike a lot of animated films that just feel trite). I thought the voice acting was good, the animation was solid, and the call-outs to classic sci-fi tropes very clever.

This is a surprisingly good film. A genuinely funny human comedy marred a little bit by its insistence on having the plot it has. But, even then, the sci-fi comedy it actually is is still pretty fun.

Score: 85