Duck, duck ... goose egg
This movie is the punishment I deserve for loving those Minions!
Illumination Entertainment, the studio that introduced those pill-shaped yellow creatures in “Despicable Me,” is back with “Migration,” a pointless movie about a family of extremely obnoxious ducks who decide to fly to Jamaica for the winter.
And, no, not the Jamaica in Queens that Chump (Awkwafina), a tough-talking New York City pigeon, mistakenly assumes when she meets the ducks. I mean the island in the Caribbean, which gives yet another 2023 children’s movie an excuse to have a famous celebrity attempt a Jamaican accent. This time it’s Keegan-Michael Key, who plays an imprisoned parrot who longs to return to his homeland.
The duck family is composed of parents Mack (Kumail Nanjiani) and Pam (Elizabeth Banks); kids Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal); and grizzled old Uncle Dan (Danny DeVito). They don’t migrate because Mack is overprotective to the point of being oppressive. The script by Mike White (HBO’s “The White Lotus”) begins with Mack telling his kids graphic stories of ducks being eaten by herons in an attempt to scare them into staying local.
Wanderlust arrives in the guise of a flock of fancy migrating ducks who land in Mack’s pond. The kids are fascinated, as is Pam. But when Kim (Isabela Merced) invites the family to join them, Mack rudely intercedes and declines the offer. It’s Uncle Dan, who is barely a sketch of a character, who convinces Mack to try migrating for once.
The ensuing trip sends the family on adventures through New York City, a cloud-filled sky, and a free-range duck farm frequented by a vicious pigtailed and tattooed chef whose signature dish is, you guessed it, duck a l’orange. Between this film and “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” free-range poultry farms are suddenly a popular location for children’s films. Both movies feature the birds getting massages before getting the ax.
There’s so little story here that “Migration”
can barely sustain its 92-minute runtime. The voice talent is reduced to either screaming or whining in any given scene. Only Carol Kane stands out as a sinister heron named Erin, whom Mack and company run afoul of during a rainstorm. Erin reminded me that “The Boy and the Heron,” a far superior movie, is also in theaters this Christmas.
Parents will be tortured by this film. If the whiny adult ducks and their even whinier kids don’t give them a headache, the garish animation will. Director Benjamin Renner loves eyes — the bigger and more ghoulish, the better. There are so many close-ups of character faces in various states of distortion that I started to wonder if my vision was failing me.
Before you laugh at my deserved punishment for loving the Minions, I should tell you they’re one of the stars of “Mooned,” the short that precedes “Migration.” They star opposite Vector, the villain of “Despicable Me,” who, you may recall, ended up stuck on the Moon after trying to steal it. “Mooned” shows us what happened next.
With its Road Runner cartoon-style slapstick, and Jason Segel returning as the mean-spirited voice of Vector, “Mooned” is more entertaining than the movie that follows it. Unlike “Migration,” it moves fast enough to keep young kids interested.