‘Migration’ Review: After a Streak of Four-Quadrant Crowd-Pleasers, Illumination’s Odd Duck Movie Is for the Birds

Peter Debruge
·5 min read
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In a medium where stop-motion chickens organize elaborate escape plans, computer-generated ducks have to do a lot more than relocate to amuse us. Illumination’s “Migration” — about a fussy duck dad who reluctantly reconsiders his fear of flying — is a cartoon in search of a concept, where the most daring idea is hiring the Oscar-nominated co-director of 2012’s “Ernest & Celestine” and asking him to abandon that movie’s unique watercolor style in favor of a relatively standard digital approach. At least the backgrounds are eye-catching, as a waddle of mallards crack jokes amid beautiful fall foliage.

In the opening scene, director Benjamin Renner teases what “Migration” might have looked like had Illumination honcho Chris Meledandri let him stick to his signature aesthetic, rather than bend it to the studio’s house style: Emerald-headed, overprotective Mack (comedian Kumail Nanjiani, quite literally quacking his lines) tells his kids, Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal), scary bedtime stories so they won’t dream of leaving the pond. The sequence is rendered in appealing 2D, with the sort of thick brush strokes and endearing design Renner brought to his “Big Bad Fox” comics.

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It’s odd that Mack and his more adventurous partner, Pam (Elizabeth Banks), who’s longing for a change of scenery, have a pair of differently aged offspring instead of several cute ducklings, unless you figure that these aren’t really ducks but stand-ins for a four-person human family, with crazy uncle Dan (Danny DeVito) along for additional laughs. As “Migration” settles into the look that will last the rest of the film — of painterly backgrounds populated by bland, bulgy-eyed birds — it’s clear what we’re in for: another kids movie in which grown-ups must overcome their narrow-mindedness.

From “Encanto” to the aforementioned “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” this has become a running theme in 21st-century animation, which no longer aims to teach impressionable young viewers a lesson, preferring to reinforce the idea that they live in a world where authority figures are wrong (or at the very least, too conservative) and really ought to listen to their kiddos. “Migration” tweaks that a smidge, emphasizing that Mack should put more stock in what his wife thinks. (Do ducks have wives? This one does. And maybe a divorce in his future.)

Mack’s parents may have taught him to stay close to the nest, but that’s terribly impractical in winter. And so, for the first time in his life, he agrees to fly south — except, instead of joining a flock that knows where it’s going, Mack insists on being his own navigator, setting off in the opposite direction of the many V-shaped formations headed the other way. Again, the story (credited to Renner and screenwriter Mike White of “White Lotus”) isn’t really about ducks so much as the obvious limitations of an inflexible “father knows best” mindset.

After leaving the gorgeous golds and ochres of their pond behind, the five ducks touch down for the night in an ominous swamp, where a pair of potentially frightening storks offer them shelter. Renner plays this sequence for maximum ambiguity, such that we can never be sure whether their haggard host, Erin (Carol Kane), is being gracious or hungrily hatching a plan to eat the ducks the instant they drop off (probably doesn’t help that she offers them a frying pan to sleep in).

Most of “Migration” boils down to presenting the family with dangerous situations that, when the ducks work together, they prove perfectly capable of managing. Next stop is New York City, which emerges from dense clouds the way Skull Island might in a King Kong movie. It’s instructive — and more than a little bit stressful — to discover a human metropolis from a duck’s perspective, though the introduction of human characters almost spoils what “Migration” had going for it. In a twist of incredibly rotten luck, the birds wind up in a fancy restaurant, where a lunatic known only as Chef (Boris Rehlinger) specializes in duck à l’orange.

Suddenly, this high-altitude road trip has a villain … and a good reason for Mack to have stayed home. Of the 13 films over 13 years released by Illumination prior to this one, no character has looked more unappealing than the oddly proportioned Chef, whose pinheaded appearance suggests an uncomfortable cross between Ozzy Osbourne and Andrew Tate. With his greasy hair and gross goatee, the heavily tattooed freak show scowls behind diamond-shaped specs, going from mere kitchen tyrant to mortal enemy of all duck-kind. It’s hard not to think that some earlier draft might have relied a little less (or not at all) on this character. A better one would have given him an accent worth imitating and some of the movie’s most memorable lines.

Instead, it’s Chef’s pet/captive parrot Delroy (Keegan-Michael Key) who steals this segment. Delroy hails from Jamaica, and with his help, the ducks should eventually be able to find their way south. Even at just 70-something minutes (before credits), the movie seems to take forever getting to its destination, delivering its funniest bit up front in the form of “Mooned,” a 10-minute short that catches up with “Despicable Me” villain Vector (Jason Segel) in exile. And thus, “Migration” finds a way to work in Minions. That’s essentially what Illumination audiences want anyway. Not ducks. In that department, Donald and Daffy pretty much have it covered. Among this year toons, the chickens ran away with the show. Or, as that poet of poultry Ogden Nash put it, “Behold the duck. It does not cluck. A cluck it lacks. It quacks.”

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