Migration (2024)

The global behemoth that is Illumination Studio's invention of the minions feels like it's now going to be with us forever. I've heard certain critics describe the minion short that precedes their latest film, Migration, as much better than the feature film itself, which has been on the receiving end of some fairly lukewarm responses. The last Illumination feature I saw was The Grinch (2018), and I'm pretty sure there was a minion short before that as well. I can't even be bothered to check, I don't care. The short before Migration had people losing their minds in the cinema, "Oh my God it's the minions!!" was heard several times and the whole thing went down very well. I really enjoyed Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022) but it definitely felt like the first strokes of an extreme flogging for a very tired horse, and since then I've lost count of the minion shorts I've seen. I was genuinely excited for Migration if only for the fact that Illumination were doing something that wasn't related to the minions; astonishingly Migration appears to be Illumination's 2024 appetizer to Despicable Me 4. So, a family of ducks live in a mundane pond in New England with the Father (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) an overprotective parent to his two kids, and the Mother (Elizabeth Banks) a more adventurous duck, eager to see the world outside their pond. When a group of migrating birds come to rest in their pond, Dad Mack is eventually persuaded to take his family to Jamaica on the adventure of a life time, and Migration follows the predictable tropes of a kids film to ensure this family trip eventually succeeds. (Spoiler alert). It's annoying to say it but Migration inevitably lacks the draw of either the minions or seemingly untouchable pop songs (Sing 1&2 [2016-2021]) so the entry point for kids has to come from something else. Cute ducks certainly isn't the worst idea, and for the most part of Migration the family unit is utterly harmless; they're terrorised by herons, the refusal to go to the toilet mid-flight, and in a particularly strong stretch of the film- the City of New York. It's in this portion of the film that we're introduced to the captious pigeon Chump, another feather in the cap of voice work for Awkwafina. Migration is at its peak in the middle section, parts of which are set in a restaurant where they're trying to free a Jamaican parrot Delroy (Keegan Michael-Key) whilst being pursued by a lunatic chef. It's the other ends of the story that sag in trying to find humour where there isn't any, but this is perfectly passable animated fun for kids, and if you take away the preceding short film you'd be taking your hat off to Illumination simply for managing to release a film in which there isn't a fucking minion in sight. But they didn't, so you can't. 6.7/10