‘Migration’ Review: After a Streak of Four-Quadrant Crowd-Pleasers, Illumination’s Odd Duck Movie Is for the Birds – Variety
In a medium the place stop-motion chickens set up elaborate escape plans, computer-generated geese need to do much more than relocate to amuse us. Illumination’s “Migration” — a few fussy duck dad who reluctantly reconsiders his concern of flying — is a cartoon searching for an idea, the place probably the most daring concept is hiring the Oscar-nominated co-director of 2012’s “Ernest & Celestine” and asking him to desert that film’s distinctive watercolor model in favor of a comparatively commonplace digital method. Not less than the backgrounds are eye-catching, as a waddle of mallards crack jokes amid lovely fall foliage.
Within the opening scene, director Benjamin Renner teases what “Migration” might need seemed like had Illumination honcho Chris Meledandri let him stick with his signature aesthetic, quite than bend it to the studio’s home model: Emerald-headed, overprotective Mack (comic Kumail Nanjiani, fairly actually quacking his traces) tells his youngsters, Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal), scary bedtime tales in order that they gained’t dream of leaving the pond. The sequence is rendered in interesting 2D, with the kind of thick brush strokes and endearing design Renner delivered to his “Massive Unhealthy Fox” comics.
It’s odd that Mack and his extra adventurous associate, Pam (Elizabeth Banks), who’s eager for a change of surroundings, have a pair of in a different way aged offspring as an alternative of a number of cute ducklings, until you work that these aren’t actually geese however stand-ins for a four-person human household, with loopy uncle Dan (Danny DeVito) alongside for extra laughs. As “Migration” settles into the look that can final the remainder of the movie — of painterly backgrounds populated by bland, bulgy-eyed birds — it’s clear what we’re in for: one other youngsters film during which grown-ups should overcome their narrow-mindedness.
From “Encanto” to the aforementioned “Hen Run: Daybreak of the Nugget,” this has grow to be a working theme in Twenty first-century animation, which not goals to show impressionable younger viewers a lesson, preferring to bolster the concept they reside in a world the place authority figures are incorrect (or on the very least, too conservative) and actually should take heed to their kiddos. “Migration” tweaks {that a} smidge, emphasizing that Mack ought to put extra inventory in what his spouse thinks. (Do geese have wives? This one does. And perhaps a divorce in his future.)
Mack’s mother and father could have taught him to remain near the nest, however that’s terribly impractical in winter. And so, for the primary time in his life, he agrees to fly south — besides, as an alternative of becoming a member of a flock that is aware of the place it’s going, Mack insists on being his personal navigator, setting off in the wrong way of the numerous V-shaped formations headed the opposite approach. Once more, the story (credited to Renner and screenwriter Mike White of “White Lotus”) isn’t actually about geese a lot as the plain limitations of an rigid “father is aware of greatest” mindset.
After leaving the attractive golds and ochres of their pond behind, the 5 geese contact down for the night time in an ominous swamp, the place a pair of doubtless scary storks supply them shelter. Renner performs this sequence for max ambiguity, such that we are able to by no means make sure whether or not their haggard host, Erin (Carol Kane), is being gracious or hungrily hatching a plan to eat the geese the moment they drop off (in all probability doesn’t assist that she gives them a frying pan to sleep in).
Most of “Migration” boils right down to presenting the household with harmful conditions that, when the geese work collectively, they show completely able to managing. Subsequent cease is New York Metropolis, which emerges from dense clouds the way in which Cranium Island may in a King Kong film. It’s instructive — and greater than somewhat bit hectic — to find a human metropolis from a duck’s perspective, although the introduction of human characters virtually spoils what “Migration” had going for it. In a twist of extremely rotten luck, the birds wind up in a flowery restaurant, the place a lunatic recognized solely as Chef (Boris Rehlinger) focuses on duck à l’orange.
Instantly, this high-altitude highway journey has a villain … and a great cause for Mack to have stayed house. Of the 13 movies over 13 years launched by Illumination previous to this one, no character has seemed extra unappealing than the oddly proportioned Chef, whose pinheaded look suggests an uncomfortable cross between Ozzy Osbourne and Andrew Tate. Together with his greasy hair and gross goatee, the closely tattooed freak present scowls behind diamond-shaped specs, going from mere kitchen tyrant to mortal enemy of all duck-kind. It’s exhausting to not suppose that some earlier draft might need relied rather less (or in no way) on this character. A greater one would have given him an accent price imitating and among the film’s most memorable traces.
As an alternative, it’s Chef’s pet/captive parrot Delroy (Keegan-Michael Key) who steals this section. Delroy hails from Jamaica, and together with his assist, the geese ought to finally be capable of discover their approach south. Even at simply 70-something minutes (earlier than credit), the film appears to take ceaselessly attending to its vacation spot, delivering its funniest bit up entrance within the type of “Mooned,” a 10-minute brief that catches up with “Despicable Me” villain Vector (Jason Segel) in exile. And thus, “Migration” finds a technique to work in Minions. That’s primarily what Illumination audiences need anyway. Not geese. In that division, Donald and Daffy just about have it coated. Amongst this 12 months toons, the chickens ran away with the present. Or, as that poet of poultry Ogden Nash put it, “Behold the duck. It doesn’t cluck. A cluck it lacks. It quacks.”
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