Y
During the half-term break, you may want to consider watching this new animated film from Illumination, the production company responsible for Sing and Minions. It follows a quirky family of mallards and while it may not be entirely unique, the jokes and concepts may seem a bit dated as if they were pieced together from various ideas within the studio. However, there are plenty of exciting adventures and an incredibly adorable duckling to make it worth watching.
In the region of New England, there is a father duck named Mack (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) who is cautious and excessively protective of his two children: teenage Dax (Caspar Jennings) and the charming duckling, Gwen (Tresi Gazal). Somehow, the children convince Mack to migrate south for the first time, leading to a series of misadventures as the family makes their way to Jamaica. However, they take a wrong turn and end up crash-landing in New York City, where the animators showcase a flock of pigeons that look incredibly lifelike. The leader of the pigeons is portrayed with an unsightly, rotted foot and is brilliantly voiced by Awkwafina with a tough New York accent.
Mike White, the creator of The White Lotus, is a co-writer of this script. He is vegan, which plays a significant role in the plot as the ducks are in danger of being served as food. The villain, Chef, is uninteresting and has no dialogue. He is the owner of a restaurant in Manhattan and resembles a bulkier version of Bono with a goatee and small tinted glasses. A more enjoyable aspect of the story is the duck farm run by two older hippies, where the leader is a shaman character voiced by David Mitchell from Peep Show.
All of which make for a perfectly acceptable family animation. But Migration does feels like B-team Illumination, and time will tell if it has any franchise potential. I can’t imagine kids watching this nine times over like Sing. That said, my two seven-year-old cinema buddies giggled themselves senseless on the bus home repeating a line about the mallards getting turned into duck a l’orange. So what do I know?
Source: theguardian.com
