This is the latest Lord and Miller animated picture from Sony Pictures Animation. Netlix bought the rights when Covid hit, and it’s up for streaming now. I enjoyed it a lot, some good laughs and Sony continue to show they can be inventive with their animation projects. It’s not quite as impressive as Into the Spiderverse but it’s still got a look to it.
Watched this with the kids and everyone loved it. Great flick.
Yeah, watched it tonight. Kids really enjoyed it. I liked it as well. It’s no Spiderverse, but you can hardly expect that.
My impression is that Lord and Miller just produced it, they didn’t write or direct it.
The animation is quite good and covers a lot of styles. My only problem was dear merciful god, what is wrong with the dad’s nose???
I also enjoyed this quite a bit. The center point of the plot (dad vs. daughter conflict) plays out in a familiar (you could also say: predictable) way, but everything is just very nicely executed. Sony Pictures Animations once again tries to do some quirky things with 3D and pushes some of the stylized elements. Not to the degree it was done in Into the Spider-Verse, but definitely distinct. The voice cast also works well, although the boy would have worked somewhat better for me if they had picked someone who isn’t past his voice break yet.
My 9 year old son laughed so hard he couldn’t breath for a little bit. So it was a bit hit at our house.
Lots of great stuff in this movie. The soundtrack and audio cues were very well done with many absolutely amazingly great moments. The ironside siren segment was my favorite.
There’s one bad thing; the trailers spoiled a couple of jokes like the Butterfly Formation and Furby.
I enjoyed it a fair bit. I do wish they’d done a bit more with the, for want of a better phrase, “off model” animation, like whole scenes in the style of the Good Cop, Dog Cop movie… Until the end it was used very sparingly and was a bit gimmicky, unlike Into The Spiderverse where it was an integral part of the aesthetic. That said, I quite liked the base animation style too.
This movie is a ton of fun and I recommend it highly. Great soundtrack too.
Behind on the scenes talk on the animation style and tech
Just finished watching this with my family. Wonderful, wonderful film. Perhaps my new favourite movie about family. Will be watching it many more times, I think.
Olivia Coleman steals the show.
Oh this is fantastic! Very glad I watched it.
I enjoyed this, but particularly the way it captured that annotated/sticker/gonzo TikTok spirit which aligns nicely with the main character’s love of media/video. Some really funny moments. Hope to watch the video above soon.
Last night we watched the first half, tonight we’ll finish it up. The kids are quite liking it, and there are some genuinely funny moments ( I really liked the two robots trying to convince the family they’re people ).
In general though, the theme on screentime and portable technology vs human interaction is admirable, but kinda irritating, just as it is in real life, but I guess movies had to acknowledge our new shitty reality of pocket phone omnipresence and turn it into stories at some point. And the whole robot canning all of humanity into floaty boxes plot is just so ridiculous I can’t enjoy it much. But I guess I should watch the rest, see what they do.
Oh yeah, that was great. If you liked that, check out the Regular Human Basketball trailer. That whole sequence reminded me of it, from the idea to the lines:
Does not compute. I look forward to your critique of Space Jam though.
Anyway my kids are obsessed with this movie and the wife and I both enjoy it quite a lot. Really great addition to the rotation. Thumbs up!
Haha! Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs might be a more apt comparison. In this case I think the movie emulates real life useage of devices and resulting conflict so well (my neighbor has a battle going on with her teen in exactly the same way) that the robot tech seems out of place, especially since given its logic it should really be exterminating people, not boxing them. But anyhoo, we’ll finish it tonight, yesterday was too nice a day to sit in front of a screen so we kicked them out into the yard (a propos, yes?)
Space Jam rocks, btw.
Amazing movie, this. I was surprised at how funny, moving and non-cringey it was.
This wasn’t totally my cup of tea, but damned if Sony’s animation house hasn’t nailed the ability to create unique visuals that mix lots of different styles. Into the Spider-Verse was amazing and now this one - they’re both so lush and original looking. I think they’re outclassing Pixar at this point.
I don’t know about outclassing, Pixar is really great at what it does, but they’re certainly breaking more ground aesthetically. I haven’t been really wowed by a Pixar movie’s aesthetics since Finding Nemo.
I haven’t been wowed by a Pixar movie’s aesthetics since Soul. C’mon, Pixar! Quit slackin’.
We watched this last night for our bi-weekly family movie night and it was a hit with everyone. We really enjoy animated films that have families where both parents are alive throughout the film. (Looking at you Disney.) Really positive messages all around. Our 10 y/o’s are really sensitive to peril in moves and my son commented that “everytime it was starting to get scary, they made it funny instead.” And this is true, the film skillfully releases tension just at the right times. (My favorite moment was when Pal went into sleep mode.)