‘Migration’ Reviews Roundup: Standard Feathery Fun For The Kids

Universal’s Migration opens in U.S. theaters today and critics have given a passing grade to the Illumination-produced film, which is the studio’s first original concept since 2016’s Sing.

French director Benjamin Renner, known for small-scale 2d productions like Ernest & Celestine and The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, takes the director’s seat on his first big-budget American film. Illumination veteran Guylo Homsy, who was head of layout on Sing 2, joins him as co-director.

Migration follows the Mallard family, led by worrywart dad Mack, as they expand their horizons and venture away from the safety and security of their New England pond into the unknown.

Critics have been generally receptive, and have found plenty to admire both visually and narratively, while acknowledging that the film hews close to well-worn American animation formulas. Currently, 70% of the critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are positive. The real test for Illumination films though is always the audience. The studio’s last film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, grossed $1.36 billion and was loved by audiences despite a tepid reaction from critics.

Migration isn’t being positioned as a tentpole. It was brought in at a relatively modest budget of $72 million and offers a low-key celeb cast, led by Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, and Danny DeVito. And despite being written by Mike White, creator of the decidedly adult HBO series The White Lotus, Migration offers little in the way of four-quadrant appeal, instead aiming its wings at the 12-and-under set.

Its biggest competition over the holidays may not be any film currently in theaters, like Wish or Trolls Band Together, but rather Netflix’s Leo, a similarly crowd-pleasing kids film that is one of the most popular animated features the streamer has ever released. Universal is projecting a modest opening weekend for the film, and hoping for steady play through the holidays and into the New Year, as families look for wholesome entertainment to entertain schoolkids on their winter breaks.

Here’s a representative look at what critics are saying about Illumination’s latest:

Katie Walsh for the highlightedChicago Tribune highlighted the parallels between White Lotus and this film, since they are both written by Mike White:

You can learn a lot about yourself — and those closest to you — on vacation. That’s the animus behind the blockbuster HBO series The White Lotus, and it’s also the major theme of the new family animated film Migration. An odd comparison, perhaps, but it all makes perfect sense when you consider both projects happen to be written by Mike White. He’s taken this notion about the transformative power of travel from his award-winning prestige tv series and transplanted it to a kid-friendly animated film about a family of ducks who finally decide to take an annual migration away from their cozy pond to see what they can see. … There’s of course the lessons to be learned through travel and adventure, especially about your partner. Mack realizes that Pam is tougher and savvier than he gave her credit for, and Pam is charmed to see Mack step up and demonstrate his bravery as the leader of their family as they get themselves into many, many perilous situations. That mirrors the themes of the resort-set The White Lotus, as well as White’s own stint as a cast member on the reality show Survivor.

Courtney Howard of Fresh Fiction found a lot to admire in Illumination’s latest:

Though Migration plays more than a few familiar notes when it comes to its themes and narrative, what cleverness it sneaks in adds a refreshing twist on the ordinary and expected. … Migration is the studio’s most gorgeous picture yet, replicating the warm autumnal palette on the leaves, the beautifully seductive glow of the concrete jungle’s neon signage and the feeling of flight through candy floss-like clouds. The animators give these birds a wide range of expressions and textured, dimensional backdrops. Mood and tone are handled brilliantly through John Powell’s score and color shifts in the cinematography.

Michael Ordoña in the Los Angeles Times observed the directing work of Renner:

That’s likely due to French director Benjamin Renner, who has made some of the lovelier animated features of the last decade or so, including the warm-hearted Oscar nominee Ernest & Celestine (2012) and The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, one of the funniest movies of 2017. Those hand-drawn films have a personal feeling that swings from smirk to hug. Renner takes to a larger moviemaking scale like a duck to water: Migration’s mélange tastes accessible enough, but his ingredients give it a soupçon of distinctive flavor. … Migration isn’t exactly unique, but it’s different enough. And in today’s factory filmmaking, that’s almost as unlikely as milking a duck.

On the other hand, Soren Andersen in the Seattle Times felt that Renner leaned too far into the noise and frenetic school of American animated filmmaking:

Migration is Renner’s first Hollywood feature. It’s 3d cgi from start to finish. Teamed with a Hollywood screenwriter, it’s probably no surprise that delicacy is nowhere in sight. Subtlety? What’s that? Some kind of French word? No room for that here.

It’s all big action. Big colorful visuals. Outsized vocal performances. Keegan-Michael Key, voicing a bright red hyperactive parrot, practically strains his vocal cords as, freed from a cage, his character performs dazzling aerobatics with celebratory squawks of freedom.

And that’s pretty much the way it goes in Migration. Animated fun for the whole fam-. Er. Check that. Fun mostly for kids between 5 and 12 or so, I’d say. Older audience members might quickly find themselves afflicted with the fidgets.

And Variety’s Peter Debruge, in one of the harsher negative reviews, couldn’t get past the formulas and clunkiness of the storytelling:

As Migration settles into the look that will last the rest of the film — of painterly backgrounds populated by bland, bulgy-eyed birds — it’s clear what we’re in for: another kids movie in which grown-ups must overcome their narrow-mindedness.

From Encanto to the aforementioned Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, this has become a running theme in 21st-century animation, which no longer aims to teach impressionable young viewers a lesson, preferring to reinforce the idea that they live in a world where authority figures are wrong (or at the very least, too conservative) and really ought to listen to their kiddos. Migration tweaks that a smidge, emphasizing that Mack should put more stock in what his wife thinks. (Do ducks have wives? This one does. And maybe a divorce in his future.)