MIGRATION Review: Illumination Returns With a Minions-Free Animated Effort

Mirroring the “Studio that Mickey Built” (Disney), the French-based Illumination animation studio has long recognized their most popular characters, the Minions, the Twinkie-inspired pranksters that debuted in Despicable Me almost 15 years ago, aren’t sufficient on their own to sustain long-term business viability.

It’s certainly not for lack of trying (see., e.g., The Grinch, The Lorax), though an over-reliance on sequels for Despicable Me (among others) suggests they’re still trying to find a magic formula (Super Mario Bros. excepted).

Even their latest family-oriented, animated film, Migration, features a standalone short that serves as a sequel to Despicable Me. It should be more than enough, though, to elevate the collective mood of pre-teen, Minion-loving audiences before the actual film they came to see, Migration, proper appears on the screen.
 
Without a single Minion anywhere in sight, Migration has some seriously heavy lifting before it can generate standalone goodwill and it certainly comes close, especially in the early moments when Illumination unleashes its animators to fill in the New England pond-based background and environment that its central mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) family make their year-round home. “Fall” is the word as Illumination’s animation team crowds every frame with a veritable riot of autumnal colors.

Later, those same animators will be called on to use computer-based skills and talents to create a fully digitized version of New York City (exteriors and interiors) along with the obligatory set pieces that have become de rigueur for animated films since time immemorial (i.e., the 1920s).
 
Said Mallard family includes Pam (Elizabeth Banks), the level-headed, de facto head of the family, Mack (Kumail Nanjiani), her risk-averse, anxiety-prone partner for life, and their two children, Dax (Caspar Jennings), as eager for adventure in the whole wide world as Mack isn’t, and Gwen (Tresi Gazal), the go-along to get-along youngest. An aging bachelor uncle, Dan (Danny DeVito), rounds out the family. While Max obsesses over keeping their tree-based home safe and secure from the elements and predators alike, Dax keeps his eyes skyward and his wings ready to unfurl with Pam umpiring their conflicting attitudes and demands.
 
Not surprisingly, the friction between Mack and Dax, the middle-aged, fearful father and his naïve, experience-seeking son, generates whatever counts as conflict in Migration. Once another flock of ducks arrives at the pond for a brief rest before heading South for the winter, the Mack-Dax conflict goes into overdrive, especially after Dax connects with an age-appropriate mallard, Kim (Isabela Merced).

Dax wants to follow the flock; Mack wants to stay. Eventually, however, Mack’s desire to retain his son’s wavering respect and overcome his insecurities wins out and the family of five decides to fly South.
 
Flying without the benefit of a regular flock, however, means the family must rely on Mack’s poor sense of direction. Before long, they’re alone and hiding under a fallen tree while they wait out the weather.

The storm allows Illumination’s animators to deliver a frightening, borderline terrifying episode involving a daft, possibly dangerous heron, Erin (Carol Kane), and her bedridden husband. Mike White’s (The White Lotus, School of Rock, The Good Girl) screenplay and the directing team, the French-born Benjamin Renner (The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales..., Yellowbird, Ernest & Celestine) and co-director Guylo Homsy, cleverly leverage Erin’s overemphatic, overbearing hospitality for its inherent ambiguity and uncertainty. Her intentions might be good. Then again, they might not be.
 
Only the knowledge that Migration still has more than an hour to go counters whatever fears and anxieties audiences might have for the relative safety of the mallards and their ongoing journey South. For one, they haven’t made it to New York City yet.

When they finally do, Migration pits the Mallards and their newfound allies against a duck-obsessed, tattooed, ponytailed chef and the high-end, ethically dubious restaurant business. The chef’s late arrival on the narrative scene gives Migration the bigger-than-animated-life villain it apparently needed.
 
A bit of déjà vu, however, will hit audiences who recently watched Aardman studio’s latest stop-motion effort, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, last weekend on Netflix. Both share a pro-fowl/pro-poultry theme along with several plot points (a utopian sanctuary that isn’t, multiple escapes) and a climax that satisfyingly turns on collective action and not individual (super) heroics. At a minimum, it’s one life lesson that should be worth celebrating.
 
Migration opens Friday, December 22, only in movie theaters, via Universal Pictures.