Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Migration’ on VOD, a Perfectly Fine Talking-Duck Road-Comedy Cartoon

Migration (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) is a movie about talking ducks. Yes, it’s animated. And yes, as the title implies, said talking ducks are prompted to take flight to warmer climes for the first time, and finally join the masses of winged creatures who vacation for the winter. So does this movie embrace Eastern philosophies that value collectivism? Does it stump for individualism like we here in the West? Or is it just about neurotic birds who need to get off their butts and see the world a little bit? Maybe a little of all of it. 

MIGRATION: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: THE POND. AUTUMN. Mack (Kumail Nanjiani) scares the bejeezus out of the ducklings, Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal), about the outside world. It’s full of things that want to eat ducks like them, you know, eagles and vultures and stuff. It’s Stranger Danger City out there! That’s why they’re staying here at the pond, nesting in the hollow tree they call home and staying safe and never experiencing the vicious, mysterious, unpredictable, murdery outside world. Maybe it’ll get cold during the winter but at least they won’t be masticated to death by covid-stricken walruses, you know?

The mom of this little flock begs to differ, though. Pam (Elizabeth Banks) doesn’t feel her husband’s anxieties. She’s less neurotic. She’s adventurous. Wise, maybe. Understands that Mack needs to get out and get over his fears and not foist them onto their children. One day some migrating birds land in the pond and introduce the idea of migration to Dax, and that’s  Pam’s opportunity to get her foot in the door. Maybe it’s time to get out of here. Jamaica seems nice. They could fly there with all the other birds and stop sitting around the boring ol’ pond like jerk chickens. The kids are all for it. Excited. The world out there is big and beautiful and exciting and there will be risks, but without risks, there are no rewards, right? Right.

Mack ponders the thought and soon realizes he’s been squatting on top of Uncle Dan’s (Danny DeVito) torpid body for hours. He shares his conundrum with Uncle Dan, who agrees with the stay-at-home sentiment. Now, Uncle Dan is a slightly warped loner weirdo, and Mack realizes he may become Uncle Dan if he just sits here staring at the same pond water for the rest of his life. So he rouses Pam and the kids and they take flight south, with Uncle Dan trailing them. He invited himself along. Could be worse, I guess, and every movie needs a little comic relief. 

And so the Mallard fam has an adventure, meeting eccentric characters along the way, including a goofy pigeon named Chump (Awkwafina), a nutty macaw named Delroy (Keegan-Michael Key), a yoga-instructor duck named GooGoo (David Mitchell) and a nasty haute-cuisine chef who really puts the turd in turducken. Will our protags survive the jaunt? NO SPOILERS, but this is a kids’ movie, so, yeah, probably.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Rio because it was about birds, Minions because it’s from the same animation studio, Ice Age because it’s about traveling animals, Winged Migration because it’s the documentary version of this story, Ratatouille because there’s a whole chunk of the movie set in a restaurant, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget because they share a remarkably similar scenario, Duck You Sucker because, you know, ducks, and The Green Knight because, well, I’ll get into that in a minute. 

Performance Worth Watching Hearing: Awkwafina has one of those immediately recognizable voices, rich with character. She always inspires laughs. She also gets the best lines here, which reflects the wisdom of the filmmaker.  

Memorable Dialogue: Chump explains what a chef is: “He’s like a predator, but instead of eating you, he serves you to a bunch of lazier predators.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Migration isn’t based on a Middle English chivalric romance written in alliterative verse like The Green Knight, but they’re structurally similar road stories consisting of a series of episodes in which the protagonists encounter bizarre and sometimes maddening characters between points A and B. Those characters are difficult to read: Are they friendly or threatening? Either way, they frequently put our protagonists in danger, prompting them to look within themselves and ponder who they are and what their purpose is on this mortal plane. Their experiences can be surreal, challenging and eye-opening. The travelers occasionally meander without direction, and realize that tangents and distractions along the way can have more meaning than the direct linear ambitions of their quest.

Sir Gawain in The Green Knight, wittingly or otherwise, sought self-knowledge, a greater purpose and wisdom. Migration’s Mack clearly needs to overcome his fear of the outside world, and that realization finds him plunging himself into the deep swamp of self-discovery, heedless of what hungry entities may lurk therein. Is Mack’s adventure a quest for wisdom, or just an extended instance of talking cartoon ducks farting around? Well, maybe there’s wisdom in that act – I’ll paraphrase a wiseass wise man, Kurt Vonnegut, who asserted that we were put on this planet to fart around, and we’d be silly to think otherwise. 

This is a long way of saying that there’s not a damn thing wrong with farting around, and that’s pretty much what Migration does. I would love – love – to say I dug up subtext about the nature of animals, their primordial instinct to move vast distances as an act of survival, but these ducks are clearly outside recognizable evolutionary boundaries, since they’re anthropomorphs who can talk and reason and feel emotions. Evolution in the film’s reality has pushed them into relatively mundane, recognizably human avenues defined by consciousness and self-awareness, things, I probably don’t need to point out, that ducks don’t normally possess. 

Your level of amusement will inevitably vary, especially if there are children in the room; the movie didn’t always make me laugh, but it made me smile, and there’s wisdom in its simple message about the value of being pushed out of your comfort zone. It also features a poop joke that’s far more sophisticated than most fecal-based comedy we see in family films. Amazingly for the genre, though, the only farting that occurs is purely metaphorical. 

Our Call: Migration is a little thin in the story and character department, but as you can see from the previous quasi-philosophical ramblings, it has a blank-slate quality that allows us to project meaning onto it, if you’re feeling it. Otherwise, it’s perfectly acceptable middle-of-the-road family entertainment with some beautifully animated sequences. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.