Migration – Review

Cert – U, Run-time – 1 hour 23 minutes, Directors – Benjamin Renner, Guylo Homsy

A family of ducks leave the safety of their pond for the first time in order to migrate to Jamaica for the winter, bumping into crazed herons and chefs along the way.

Migration is unlikely to change anyone’s mind about Illumination, or really trouble the mind long after it’s finished. In recent years many have associated the studio with overly familiar narratives wading through convention with more push for Minions over originality (Minions fans may well be amused by slapstick short film Mooned which precedes the feature – I personally still find a mild chuckle every now and then from the characters). Migration’s narrative is no different in terms of being a recognisable set of events as we follow the Mallard family, a group of ducks who have never left the safety of their pond due to father Mack’s (Kumail Nanjiani) fears of the outside world and the predators which lie in it.

However, when a group of birds travelling south for the winter make a rest stop at the pond Mack quickly becomes convinced to get away and take his family to Jamaica. Yet, there’s much more than just crazed herons (Carol Kane) in the wider world, there are merciless New York chefs who won’t hesitate to cook and serve the family if he catches them. As Mack and his family; wife Pam (Elizabeth Banks), children Dax (Caspar Jannings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal) and elderly Uncle Dan (Danny DeVito – managing to get a couple of chuckles with the most cartoonish character in the film), make their way to the Caribbean the landscapes are undeniably well animated. In terms of animation quality Migration is perhaps the studio’s best looking film to date, with a slightly lower budget to most of their recent fare (at $72 million).

While you can see the stages and separate ideas in the narrative making for a structure of bits and pieces that you can see and feel going from one to the other, as the film goes on and the characters get into the wider world there’s more to like. Not anything new or challenging there’s at least a more amusing nature to the unfolding events, helped by a short 83-minute run-time, with the odd chuckle along the way.

The aforementioned villainous chef may create a bump or two – more in terms of feeling there simply for the sake of having an antagonist over anything else – but then again this might be down to not being overly present for much of the run-time. Treated as a silent character with the occasional grunt and audible sneer the film seems to be aiming for a Shaun The Sheep style with the character, but never quite lands this feeling due to not having the same kind of charm or humour in making the character the butt of the jokes, or the ways in which the protagonists outwit them.

Overall there’s a generally direct nature to Migration. It knows that it needs to get its characters from A to B (pond to Jamaica) and gets them there via the occasional challenge and new stage in the journey. Again, we’ve seen the outline (and indeed some elements of the presentation) of this narrative before, and there’s a good deal of familiarity on display, particularly in the first half. Yet, as things move along there’s enough to like about the air that the film creates for things to progress pleasantly enough for the time that they’re on. Thanks to a couple of lightly amusing gags, and to an extent a feeling that the film knows that it’s not trying to reinvent the wheel, there’s eventually enough here, largely once in the wider world, to make for a likable, if forgettable piece of work. It could easily feel much lazier.

Not exactly bringing anything new to the table, Migration won’t change anyone’s mind about Illumination. However, this latest, visually great, offering from the studio is amusing enough for the brief time it lasts with little trouble along the way, even if you can see and feel the individual stages of the narrative.