
They meet two defective robots, Eric and Deborahbot 5000, who tell the family they can use a kill code to shut down PAL and all the robots.

Rick decides that his family should stay put in the café for their own safety, but Katie convinces him to help save the world instead. The Mitchells manage to avoid capture at a roadstop café in Kansas. In revenge, PAL orders all the robots to capture humans worldwide and launch them into space. Meanwhile, technology entrepreneur Mark Bowman declares his highly intelligent AI PAL obsolete as he unveils a new line of home robots to replace her. To try to prevent this, Rick decides to cancel Katie's flight and instead take her, her mother Linda, younger brother Aaron, and family dog Monchi on a cross-country road trip to her college as one last bonding experience, much to Katie's chagrin. The evening before Katie leaves, Rick accidentally breaks her laptop after a fight over one of Katie's previous short films, leading the family to fear their relationship will forever be strained. Katie Mitchell is a quirky aspiring filmmaker in Kentwood, Michigan, who often clashes with her nature-obsessed and technophobic father Rick, and has recently been accepted into film school in California. However, it swept all the categories it was nominated for at the 49th Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature, making it the second film by Sony Pictures Animation to do so after Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2019.

For the accolades, the film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 94th Academy Awards but lost to Encanto. The film received critical acclaim for its animation, voice acting, action scenes, themes, humor, and LGBT representation. the Machines, and released it in select theaters on April 23, 2021, before its streaming release a week later on April 30. Netflix retitled it to Rianda and Rowe's original preferred title, The Mitchells vs. The film was originally planned to be released theatrically by Sony Pictures Releasing under the title Connected in 2020, but due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on movie theaters, Sony sold the main distribution rights to Netflix. It stars an ensemble voice cast that includes Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Rianda, Eric André, Olivia Colman, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett, John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, Blake Griffin, Conan O'Brien, and Doug the Pug.


The film follows the dysfunctional Mitchell family that winds up having to save Earth from a global robot uprising while on a road trip. The film was directed by Mike Rianda, co-directed by Jeff Rowe (in their feature directorial debut), and written by Rianda and Rowe, with Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Kurt Albrecht serving as producers. the Machines is a 2021 computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by Sony Pictures Animation.
