By far the best animated movie to come out in 2021, THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES is delightfully bonkers, high energy and the type of animated feature that adults will enjoy on every level that kids will also love.
Our writer Dustin Buursma wrote about THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES last year, and it took me this long to catch up with it. What I loved is the father-daughter dynamic between Katie and her dad, and how their relationship changed as she goes into her formative years. That a family completes them including a wide-eyed dog and their plight over a sudden world disaster is strange, colourful and very comical with many zany gags coming at you a mile a minute.
About The Blu Ray:
This movie was originally called CONNECTED and it was originally intended to have a theatrical release via Sony, but thanks to the COVID pandemic it instead was licensed out to Netflix. That said, Sony still had its heart set on a physical media release and I’m so glad that they went this route.
Sony has created a terrific Blu Ray presentation here in a release that is legit reason to have a copy on your shelf, but let’s start with the transfer. This eye-popping, colourful transfer in its proper 1.85 aspect ratio blew away my recent Netflix presentation which was just high-definition. The movie has a great design in its computer animation with a nice mix of computer and what feels like traditional animation and a massive colour spectrum; this is especially evident in the final act where this reaches near HDR quality. The sound mix in Dolby 5.1 is a bit louder and more aggressive than other family movies I have seen as of late with the infamous Furby sequence giving my sound system a pretty good workout. Crank this up and enjoy, as I like to say.
Katie Mitchell sure came out strong on this special edition with her own “Extended Cinematic Bonanza Cut” along with deleted scenes, filmmaker commentary and fun menus that really seems like it comes from a younger physical media fan. I was also very impressed with the short film DOG COP 7: THE FINAL CHAPTER. There’s even a little included sheet with Katie’s director notes which complements the entire package.
While part of me wishes they pushed further into 4k HDR disc territory (switch out the useless included DVD!), this Blu Ray is still incredibly satisfying. The included Google Play code is sadly HD only as many Sony digital copies typically don’t upscale to 4k in Canada and this is something I hope changes soon. With all of that said, this is still such a great overall presentation of the movie for physical media fans. Highly recommended.
THE MITCHELLS VS THE MACHINES is now available on Blu Ray. Special thanks to Sony and Taro PR for sending along a copy for review.