Migration (U)

Scaredy-duck Mack spins nightmarish bedtime stories to educate his two children, Dax and Gwen, about the perils of straying from the comfort of Moose Head Pond. Mack's loyal and quick-witted wife Pam yearns for new horizons so Mack organises a spontaneous migration south from leafy New England to Jamaica. Uncle Dan joins the airborne family expedition. Changeable weather conditions propel the flock off course and the ducks rely on the kindness of the quirky strangers.

LondonNet Film Review

Migration (U) Film Review from LondonNet

Films of a feather merge together in Migration, a predictable but feelgood computer-animated odyssey directed by Benjamin Renner and co-directed by Guylo Homsy, which nests in some of the same places as Chicken Run and Rio. Running battles between resourceful mallards and a menacing chef, whose house speciality is duck a l’orange, bear striking similarities to the fowl play of Aardman Animation’s stop-motion farmer Mrs Tweedy. Aerial acrobatics above a fluffy cloud line glide in the slipstream of How To Train Your Dragon (coincidentally, composer John Powell scores both films) and a baby duckling’s weaponised cuteness borrows from the playbooks of Shrek’s Puss In Boots and excitable Agnes in Despicable Me. Meanwhile, the duck family’s unplanned arrival in fog-shrouded New York City slaloms in terror between skyscraper giants to conjure fond memories of a similar sequence in the charming 1996 live-action feature Fly Away Home…

Mike White, Emmy Award-winning screenwriter of The White Lotus, brings some of his sardonic humour to a ducks-out-of-water script that repeatedly clips its own tail feathers as it deals with cross-generational strife, self-doubt and actor Keegan-Michael Key’s thick Jamaican accent. That biting wit is most evident in marital discord between an anxiety-crippled mallard (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) and his wife (Elizabeth Banks), and a surprisingly dark interlude with a great blue heron (Carol Kane) who jokes about gobbling up the couple’s cherubic offspring.

Scaredy-duck Mack (Nanjiani) spins nightmarish bedtime stories to educate his two children, Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal), about the perils of straying from the comfort of Moose Head Pond. Mack’s loyal and quick-witted wife Pam (Banks) yearns for new horizons but she appears powerless to prevent Max from crushing the ducklings’ adventurous spirits and her own dreams. “I don’t want to miss out on life because you are afraid to leave this pond,” she laments. In response, Mack organises a spontaneous migration south from leafy New England to Jamaica.

“I wanna go where they make jam!” whoops Gwen, leveraging her wide-eyed innocence and adorability to persuade curmudgeonly uncle Dan (Danny DeVito) to join the family expedition. Trusting his rusty internal compass, Mack takes flight with his clan, bound for sunnier climes. Changeable weather conditions propel the flock off course and the ducks rely on the kindness of the quirky characters they encounter along the way including Central Park pigeon gang leader Chump (Awkwafina), caged macaw Delroy (Michael Key) and yoga-loving duck GooGoo (David Mitchell).

Migration signals its heart-warming intent before Mack and co are airborne, loudly espousing the pursuit of sky-high dreams even if that means an occasional emergency landing to regroup. The sparkling ensemble cast coasts along on autopilot for most of the flight with almost no dramatic turbulence before a safe landing in tropical paradise.

– Sarah Lee