The family-savvy folks at Illumination continue to mine for cuteness by hitting easy targets with Migration, a road movie of sorts centred around a family of wide-eyed, adventure-seeking mallards on route to Jamaica.

The spontaneous trip is sprung on the family when daddy duck Mack (Eternals’ Kumail Nanjiani) insists they piggyback on a flock of traveling birds that visited their pond.  Of course, this idea comes shortly after Mack’s wife Pam (Power Rangers’ Elizabeth Banks) and their kids (Caspar Jennings, Tresi Gazal) beg and suggest the same thing after admitting how bored they are with “pond life”.  Mack, content with staying safe at home, is only motivated after realizing how unflattering “hermit life” is after spending a few minutes with weird ol’ Uncle Dan (a strangely reigned in Danny DeVito).

Once they hit the skies, Migration takes on a segmented approach to its story;  piecing together mini deviations to map out the mallards’ trip down South.  They meet a couple of quirky herons, a city slickin’ pigeon named Chump (Awkwafina, bringing the same energy she provided for 2023’s The Little Mermaid), a caged macaw named Delroy who misses his Jamaican homestead (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key, which may be problematic casting), and a whole gaggle of brainwashed birds who think they have it made until they find out what they’re been wrangled for (inviting awkward comparisons to Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget though, I’m sure, the similarities are all coincidences).  A grumbly, high-demand executive chef is the only other character that’s carried over across some of these stories, and his presence is a good inclusion that adds extra danger.

Illumination has used the same sort of narrative before with The Secret Life of Pets 2, where side stories are strung together.  However, the format had better results in the former family flick.  They may have not been the most original stories, but they fit together nicely and built towards a climax in an entertaining way.  Migration, which is a mid-tier flick compared to Illumination’s past features, always feels like it’s stopping-and-starting.  The animation is attractive and the voice acting is lively, but the script (in a rare misstep by esteemed screenwriter Mike White) inherits the negative aspects of an anthology feature.  Parents will be reminded of those horror “found footage” anthologies, where so much time is spent on bit players that we’ll never see again.  The same applies to Migration. : no one dies (phew!), but anyone with an age in the double digits may grow restless from the repetition.  

**********

Do You Tweet? Follow These Tweeple:

Addison Wylie: @AddisonWylie