The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Top Five · Roundtable · Interview
May 14, 2021/ 91 min/ Sean Fennessey · Rob Harvilla · Charles Holmes
Sean, Rob Harvilla, and Charles Holmes each draft a top five animated movies of the 21st century and keep landing on the same two. Then Mike Rianda explains what it took to get The Mitchells vs. the Machines out of development and onto Netflix.
52 films across 10 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The Lion King and how animation imprintscold open
Charles's favorite movie of all time, animated or not. He wore out the VHS as a kid in a big extended family where a cartoon was always playing. He calls the 2019 CGI remake, starring Donald Glover and Beyoncé, a heartbreak; Rob, unironically, says that version was his favorite movie of that year.
The Mitchells vs. the Machinesnew on Netflix, directed by Mike Rianda
A Lord & Miller production directed by Mike Rianda about a family road trip that collides with a robot uprising. Went through a title change (it was originally announced as Connected) and a studio change, moving from a Sony theatrical release to Netflix after the pandemic hit. All three hosts liked it a lot: Rob calls it a movie that balances earnestness about family with hyper-aware commentary on the internet and technology; Charles says it lands on ‘technology isn't bad, being without it is bad’ rather than simple tech-panic. Maya Rudolph voices the mom.
Rob's comparison point: another good movie about how much cultural ground movies have lost to the internet.
Rob notes Maya Rudolph also voices the mother figure in this Netflix film, based on a Lois Lowry book and less prestigious than Mitchells, but he thinks she should play the mom in every animated movie from here on.
Another movie Rob's kids watched recently; he describes it as being about a preteen who still acts like she's in a kids' show, which he connects to the crossover moment his own older son is starting to hit.
Sean rewatched this Lord & Miller film (a loose adaptation of a book that's only about 14 pages long) and points out that even 12 years ago it had a gag about a YouTube cat video distracting a character, the same internet-versus-attention idea Mitchells is built around.
Pixar's midlife crisis and animation for grown-upsSoul, Ghibli, and the arthouse fringe
Sean's example of Pixar's recent turn toward movies that are, as he puts it, some kind of emotional reckoning for its middle-aged filmmakers: beautiful and creative, but harder to watch than fun.
Sean's other example, explicitly about mourning a dead father. Part of the same wave of heavier late-period Pixar.
One of the animated movies Rob remembers seeing in a theater before he had kids.
Another pre-kids theatrical watch Rob name-checks.
Rob saw it as a stoned college experiment and respects it, though he hasn't rewatched it in years and has no plans to show it to his kids.
Rob saw it in theaters and still remembers the use of the song 'Enola Gay' over an image of soldiers on a ship.
Sean's example of animation made explicitly for adults. He jokes you should be arrested for showing it to a kid.
Rob calls it a great movie whose soundtrack is still stuck in his head, and says it's now on his list to eventually show his kids.
Rob says it never occurred to him it was rated PG. He'd filed a Wes Anderson movie away as something too weird for his kids, like playing them Captain Beefheart, until he realized it would actually work for them.
Rob's other Wes Anderson pick he figures is probably fine to watch with kids.
Part of the early Aardman run Rob loved before he had kids and that his own kids later found on their own.
Rob has a specific memory of watching this soccer-themed Aardman movie with his son in 2018.
Rob watched it with his kids the night before this taping as a favor to Sean, a known Rango obsessive; his seven-year-old's entire reaction was a flat 'eh.'
Comes up here as a movie Rob's kids couldn't fully articulate why, but could tell was different and higher quality. He expands on it later as his own No. 3 pick.
The late-career auteur animated movieTintin, Sausage Party, and the streamlined 90s
Sean's example of a well-known live-action director (Steven Spielberg) taking a late-career swing at animation that he says he still doesn't fully understand the appeal of.
Sean's other Spielberg example in the same vein.
One of Robert Zemeckis's motion-capture films from the last 20 years; Sean jokes he doesn't know that Beowulf himself would sit through the Beowulf movie.
Sean's other Zemeckis motion-capture example.
Sean's example of an animated movie explicitly made for adults not through existential depth but by just being a dirty comedy, from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
Sean's example of the streamlined, uncluttered storytelling of the 90s Disney Renaissance, in contrast to how frantic and overloaded a movie like Mitchells can feel from constant revision.
Rob's kids watched the original with him, fairly calm and streamlined except for Robin Williams's manic energy as the Genie, which Rob says every character in Mitchells vs. the Machines has now.
Charles's Top 5 Animated Movies of the 21st Centuryranked best to worst
No. 1. Charles loves that Miyazaki's movies are built on the idea that kids are missing hard work: a little girl has to labor to get her parents back. He connects it to his first summer job as a middle school janitor, when he first understood his own parents as people worn down by work.
No. 2. Charles calls it the first movie that actually feels like reading a comic book. He's cried at the same moment (Miles finally leaping off the building) every one of the two or three times he's seen it in theaters.
No. 3. His sneak pick. Directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, who went on to make How to Train Your Dragon. Charles says it felt like the last 2D Disney movie before that era ended, and the first Disney film willing to let its main character be genuinely unlikable for most of the runtime.
No. 4. Charles's only Pixar pick. He calls it possibly Pixar's peak, and says he's spent his career as a critic looking for his own metaphorical rat.
No. 5. Directed by Satoshi Kon. Charles first saw it on cable at his grandparents' house and was floored by how accurately it captures the feeling of a dream, unlike, in his view, Christopher Nolan's Inception.
Rob's Top 5 Animated Movies of the 21st Centuryranked best to worst
No. 1. Rob's family watched a run of Miyazaki films during COVID lockdown, starting with Howl's Moving Castle in a theater and moving through HBO Max's Ghibli catalog; he calls the shot of Chihiro alone on the train, the one that's all over Twitter, one of the saddest and most beautiful images he knows.
No. 2. Rob's one Pixar pick. The ending gives him the strongest emotional reaction he's had to a movie in years, and he says it's a rare case where he's crying next to his kids rather than watching a different movie than they are.
No. 3. Rob's wife used to work at the animation studio behind it, which had mostly been doing direct-to-video Disney sequels; he singles out the hand-drawn image of the wolf mother surrounded by red hair and wolves as burned into his memory.
No. 4. Rob's son had a Spider-Verse-themed birthday party with a dozen kids projected onto the walls; Rob singles out Jake Johnson's schlubby voice performance as Peter B. Parker as one of his favorite pieces of voice casting.
No. 5. Rob's rule for parents: pick movies with soundtracks you can survive hearing on repeat for months. He credits Lin-Manuel Miranda's songs, plus Jemaine Clement as a David Bowie-inflected crab villain, with the durability.
Sean's Top 5 Animated Movies of the 21st Centuryranked best to worst
No. 1. Sean says nothing has taken his breath away visually quite like this movie, from directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman. It ignores the conventions of a superhero movie and discards the idea of a mold entirely.
No. 2. Sean was an active music critic when he first saw it and connected hard with Anton Ego's arc. He calls the movie fundamentally about turning a passion into a life's work.
No. 3. Also both Rob's and Charles's No. 1. Sean calls it a totalizing vision of one person's imagination put directly onto the screen.
No. 4. Directed by Don Hertzfeldt, about a stick-figure named Bill who gets a grim diagnosis and spirals into existential despair, scored with centuries-old classical music. Sean calls it one of the truest portrayals of what it means to be alive he's seen in any movie, and warns Rob, twice, not to watch it with his kids.
No. 5. Directed by Gore Verbinski. Sean says he blogged extensively about it when it came out and considers it a movie unafraid to be itself, made possible by the box-office capital Verbinski earned from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy.
The Harvilla family Ghibli marathonthe run-up to Spirited Away
The first Miyazaki film Rob's family saw, in a theater right before COVID lockdown.
Rob's own favorite Miyazaki film. He says his personality is aspirationally based on Totoro.
The one they watched right after Totoro, closing out the family's mini Ghibli run before Spirited Away. Rob's kids gave the movie's theme song, sung by Noah Cyrus and covered widely, an 8.8 in the bit where Charles asks for a Pitchfork-style score.
Honorable mentions just outside the lists
Laika's stop-motion feature, one of the studio's best in Sean's view.
The other Laika pick Sean says is right on the outside of his list.
One more Pixar title Sean says is just outside his top five.
In conversation
Rianda says the movie's pro-technology stance is sincere: the internet was where he found other cartoon-obsessed kids and cartoonists willing to answer his questions before he broke into the industry. He describes a five-year process at Sony Pictures Animation that required a fully polished script and a test-screening-ready animatic before the studio would even greenlight hiring artists, with Chris Miller and Phil Lord eventually coming on as executive producers after seeing an early cut. The film was originally titled Connected before Netflix, which acquired it during the pandemic, asked for the original title back.
Rianda says he watched this Wes Anderson film every single night one summer as a kid, enough that his mentor, animator Mark Mothersbaugh, told him to dial it back.
Mike Mills's film that Rianda says changed his life. He called his grandmother immediately after watching it, convinced of the power of movies to do the same for other people.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Considered and cut Zootopia
In passing Thor: RagnarokBlack PantherGuardians of the GalaxySpace JamThe Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London AdventureThe Lego MovieThe Lego Movie 2: The Second PartAkiraToy StoryKiki's Delivery Service
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Ren & StimpyThe SimpsonsAdventure TimeRegular ShowSteven Universe
Games Among Us
Podcasts 60 Songs That Explain the '90sThe Ringer Music ShowMidnight Boys
Ads American Express Business PlatinumBoar's HeadLululemon