Migration review – A sorely underpowered duck tale

Everyone knows that Salt Bae is one of the most awful humans currently roaming the planet, and you’ll be happy to discover that the folks over at Illumination Animation Studios concur with that fact. A nameless, voiceless parody of Salt Bae turns up as the knife-wielding, indoor micro sunglasses-wearing antagonist in Migration, a light comic caper about a family of mallards (always referred to here as mallards, never ducks?) who accidentally migrate north for the winter and end up in New York City.

The evil chef is introduced as someone who keeps a tropical macaw locked up in a very small cage, and he’s shown violently humiliating one of his sous chefs for what he construes to be an inferior plate of food. Yet rather than steak wrapped in gold leaf, duck à l’orange, that 70s classic, is the chef’s speciality, and he’s depicted fetishising a sharp carving blade in every shot he appears, either spinning it around his finger like a six-shooter, or scraping it along the crispy skin of the roasted bird.

His presence in the film serves to highlight what a lop-sided affair it is, as it is initially focused on the mallards’ journey, and then suddenly they have this pantomime foe to attend to. I must say that, while watching Migration, I was hoping that it was going to be about the powerful symbolism that can be imposed onto the out-of-season appearance of ducks in urban settings. I also hoped that it was going to reveal that these were the ducks that set up shop in Tony Soprano’s swimming pool and sent him on his prolonged existential tailspin… alas!

Migration is not an ambitious film, and doesn’t seem to have anything important to say about why one might migrate and the lessons we can learn from this rather arduous but necessary endeavour. There’s not even any commentary on the relative differences between the country and the city. There’s lots of silly humour aimed at knee-highs and many of the jokes and set-ups have been repackaged from all manner of wise-cracking animal-based animations from past times.

Kumail Nanjiani and Elizabeth Banks earn their paychecks voicing the two parent mallards, Mack and Pam, accepting the very easy ride of essentially having to lightly adapt their standard comic personas to the world of anthropomorphised ducks. However, one major educational plus point in the film is that I was shocked at the revelation that herons eat ducks. Who knew?!

The screenplay by Mike White was clearly written during his White Lotus chai breaks, and it’s sad to see that the film was directed by Benjamin Renner who, in 2012, made the wonderful, original and completely charming animated feature Ernest & Celestine. Here, has fully given his creative instincts over to the immovable style template of the Illumination brain trust, and there’s really no evidence here that he was one time responsible for such a lovely, rich and humane movie – all qualities that Migration sorely lacks.

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