So when it comes watching animated movies, whenever I see that a new animated film is being released, it's pretty safe to say that I'm more than excited to watch that movie. As long its reviews are even borderline acceptable to me, I'm gonna give the film a chance.
Indeed, for me animated films usually provide a wonderful moment to forget my worries in life. As long as these movies are even remotely well made, watching them gives me hope and a chance to think about those better things about life.
In any case, this time me and my friend managed to watch together a movie called 'The Mitchell's vs. the machines'. This is a movie about a family that find itself in situation where the machines take over the world - and they're humanity's last and only chance.
Expectation-wise, based on the reviews the movie had received (97% fresh at Rottentomatoes.com by the critics and 89% fresh by the audience), it looked that this film would be a treat. I was confident that it would be well made and enjoyable as a whole.
Unfortunately, having now seen the film a couple of days ago, I have to say that I wasn't really impressed by the quality of the movie. Especially when it comes to its story and screenplay, the film is really poorly written and leaves so much to be desired.
Story- & premise-wise, one of the biggest if not the biggest problem with 'The Mitchells vs. Machines's is that it doesn't know what it's about. It tries to be at least two different movies in one (in two different genres), without succeeding in either one of them.
By that I mean is that first, during its first 20 minutes, we are introduced to a family film about a daughter, who is leaving to college. As the family (dad especially) is feeling sad about the event, the story points to a sentimental family film that has to do with 'reflecting'.
However, once the dad and the family (for absolutely no reason) decide to go on a road trip to take the daughter to her out of state college, things change. We're now introduced to a story sequence (and new characters) that shows how the machines are taking over the world.
Plot-wise, what is really bizarre about this 'twist' is that this 'machines taking over' more or less comes out of nowhere. Before these sequences almost nothing in the story suggested that we would be dealing with some kind of a wacky survival film here.
Structure-wise, the really big problem with this '2 movies in 1' is that it can't be pulled off successfully. It will only result in everything being completely muddled, like the 'adhd'-pacing and the themes being constantly off and things never happening when they should.
Indeed, as we kept watching the film, all I could see was a film full of events that had plot holes (the only family to not be captured?!), comedy bits that were rushed and emotional moments that were incredibly half assed. None of the stuff felt satisfying or entertaining.
Not that surprisingly, once this overlong movie (1h 50 mins) finally ended, all I could think of was that the whole thing was a complete disaster. How on earth were people able to make a 100 million dollar movie with a script that was so bad and so full of flaws.
In that sense, when it comes to 'Mitchells vs. the machines' as a whole, I think it's obvious that from a writer's perspective, this not a movie that is easy to recommend. There are really that many problems with the film's overall concept and story that can't be ignored.
After all, even though - as usual - there's no question that the movie looks and sounds really good, that's not all there is to it to making a solid film that can entertain you. You still need to have a good story in it that actually works and makes sense.
Unfortunately for us, in the end, that's not what the producers (Lego movies) were able to do. They weren't able to give us an entertaining film, so the end result is a movie that instead of being well made, at least story-wise, is amateurish on almost every imaginable level.
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