BEFORE: Well, I got the Easter candy I wanted yesterday, I made a deal with myself that if I worked a few hours on entering film festivals for my new client, then I would go online and track down the candy I wanted, which turned out to be easier than I thought. I used one of those grocery-shopping sites with free delivery for new members, they hooked me up with a drugstore in Brooklyn that had leftover candy available, and I got all the good flavors of creme eggs, like raspberry and maple and coconut, for like 40 cents each, so I bought five of each, to make the delivery minimum. I won't go crazy eating them, I'll probably dole them out to myself over the next few months, but the good news is that I only spent about thirteen bucks to get what I wanted, it wasn't too dear, and I allowed myself (for once) to get what I wanted. So a win all around, and I never have to use that delivery service again, maybe next year for more Easter candy, plus, score one more point for technology and the internet, which I think is on them considering today's movie, which details the robot apocalypse.
Fred Armisen carries over from "How It Ends".
THE PLOT: A quirky, dysfunctional family's road trip is upended when they find themselves in the middle of the robot apocalypse and suddenly become humanity's unlikeliest last hope.
AFTER: The other news I have is that the last animated feature I worked on got accepted into the Tribeca Film Festival, which is a huge deal. For the director, sure, but I'd also like to think this is a feather in the cap of anyone who worked on the film, because a rising tide lifts all boats, and all that. But I didn't work on the last year of the film's production, because of the pandemic, and I didn't work on entering festivals for that film, so there's this weird dichotomy where I hope the film does well, of course, but it feels a little weird because I was also technically fired from that production, so in the end I don't know exactly how to feel. The animation industry is a bit weird because everybody sort of knows everybody else, and you want your friends to do well, sure, but then there's a small jealous part deep down, I think, and you wonder why your film didn't do as well as theirs, or what that producer or director knows that you don't, and so on. I guess nobody really talks about the down side of having friends who are having success when you're not. (I bring this up today because I know one of the producers of today's film, he's one of the "Lego Movie" and "Spider-Verse" creators, and I wish him well, I really do.)
It took me almost a year to get around to watching this film, it was released on Netflix April 30 of last year - linking being what it is, but also I have to deal with other people having more success and more connections than I do, and maybe I'll never work on a big blockbuster animated feature like this one, unless I make some radical changes in my life and lifestyle, and that's just not easy for me to do. So I've put myself in this position where I often celebrate the success of others, and I guess that's slightly easier in the long run.
I get where this film is coming from, it wants to celebrate the quirky, unusual people, some of whom grow up to become filmmakers, and I think all of this comes from a well-intentioned place. Apparently the family is based on a real family, or real enough, or perhaps it's just based on an amalgam of all families, how they can be full of odd and anxious and self-defeating characters, who mostly get along but then also have complex disagreements sometimes about life and career and sacrifice and whether it's a good idea to leave home and go to college, and go out in the world and find a new family and new things to do. Maybe there's an odd connection here to "The Croods: A New Age", which covered some of the same territory - we're all still as cavemen, really, and we have to deal with the break-up of the tribe at some point.
Dad's clueless when it comes to computers, Mom tries to bake cupcakes and also hold the family together, little brother likes dinosaurs and is awkward around girls, and the dog can't do anything right. This is one family, but it's also every family, I suppose, or any family could see themselves in THIS family perhaps. It's specific but also so very generic at the same time - the kids spend way too much time using their phones, nobody really talks about their problems, and if they do it turns into a fight, their interests are making them spend more time apart and less time together, and suddenly it's time for Katie to go to college and they have to deal with that.
The father's "answer" is to cancel her plane ticket, and do one last family car trip across the country before they have to deal with the break-up of the family. It's a terrible answer, because it makes the daughter a week late for orientation, however it's necessary to set up the situation of them being out in the world when the robot take-over starts to happen.
It's an adult's worst nightmare - a corporate tech guy decides that the operating system on his enormously popular cell phone brand needs an upgrade, so he turns the cell phones into robots, who will cook and clean for the humans, giving everyone lives of leisure. This turns the old OS, named "PAL" in a clear "2001" reference, into the film's villain and starts the process of capturing all seven billion humans into energy hexagons and stacking them into vertical rocket ships that will launch and never return. OK, a couple little NPs here, first of all, is the upgrade from cell phone to robot really viable if the robot doesn't play any of the games we've become addicted to? OK, great, the robot's going to organize my bookshelf and load the dishwasher, but I can't play "Words with Friends" or "Candy Crush" any more, and that's a big problem. Secondly, how is capturing people and transporting them to rockets an efficient way to take over, it's much much harder than, say, killing all the humans. Plus all that energy to launch rockets, how is this an efficient solution?
I know, I know, on some level this isn't meant to be taken seriously, it's more of an allegory of sorts, and I'm overthinking it, but that's what I do. It all has to happen this way so that this one family has the chance to be heroes, so they can learn the ways of the robot, learn how to evade the robots, and eventually learn to defeat the robots. If the robots had killed everyone else, then it's too late, no chance to fix anything - so it just HAD to be this way, but it's not the more efficient way that robot overlords probably would take over, we've seen that in the "Terminator" films, and it's not pretty.
I've got other questions, though, beyond the logistics of the robot take-over. Late in the film, through watching home movies, Katie learns that her parents once had a very different lifestyle, they were actually cool, quirky outsiders who dressed funny and lived in a cabin that he built. Then after she was born, they changed their lifestyle, moved to a house and he had to get a better job, I guess this makes sense, but also WHY? They could have continued living in the cabin, I'm a little unclear on why he had to give up on his dream just because he had a daughter. I mean, sure, I get that parents have to sacrifice part of their lives because they want the best possible life for their kids, but specifically why did they have to move out of the cabin, I'm sure kids have been raised in cabins in the past, it's not the weirdest possible life. He could have had his dream and also raised a daughter, why couldn't he realize this?
It just seems like maybe another specific case where one filmmaker brought in another specific detail from their own life, and didn't properly explain it, because it already made sense to them, but not the audience. This film really scored, however, when it chose to depict a gay character and didn't make that the focus of the conflict with her father - they argued over other things, but not THAT. Plus this made her sexual orientation just a fact, not a problem, or even a major story hurdle, plus her parents seem to be cool with it, and those are all good things in the long run. There's also some good messaging about the effects of social media, like what happens when you follow that "perfect" family on Instagram, who always seems to be taking better vacations than you, and what that does to your psyche - hint, it's not good. Just be yourself, love what you love, love WHO you love, and don't give up on your dreams, and maybe it will all work out, if the robots don't take over first.
Also starring the voices of Abbi Jacobson (last seen in "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising"), Danny McBride (last seen in "Zeroville"), Maya Rudolph (last seen in "CHIPS"), Mike Rianda, Olivia Colman (last heard in "Locke"), Eric André (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), Beck Bennett (last seen in "Bill & Ted Face the Music"), Chrissy Teigen (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), John Legend (last seen in "Coming 2 America"), Charlyne Yi (last heard in "Trolls 2: World Tour"), Blake Griffin (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Clear History"), Melissa Sturm (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Sasheer Zamata (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Elle Mills, Alex Hirsch, Jay Pharoah (last seen in "Top Five'), Jeff Rowe, Zeno Robinson, Grey Griffin (last heard in "Onward"), Doug the Pug.
RATING: 6 out of 10 evil roombas (I KNEW it!)
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