Movie review: Migration

(courtesy IMP Awards)

Life can be a LOT.

In many ways, that’s a good thing, with all the thrilling possibility and hope that offers us for great adventures, wondrous discoveries and amazing experiences; sometimes though it can all be too much, and because of trauma or anxiety or a host of negative moments that add to one big enervating blob of fear, all we want to do, even with FOMO lingering on the periphery, is to stay tucked away safely somewhere where all the parameters are clearly defined and the knowns are very much known.

While we never quite find out what caused Migration‘s beating heart, Mack Mallard (Kumail Nanjiani) to retreat from migratorily expansive realms to one small pond somewhere in eastern North America, he is one anxious bird, happy to stay put in a place he knows well with a family – wife Pam (Elizabeth Banks), son Dax (Caspar Dennings) and daughter Gwen (Tresi Gazal) – who might not share his hatred of the outside world.

That becomes quite obvious one day when a flock of ducks land in an acrobatically impressive formation on the pond, and Dax and Gwen rush up to meet them, closely followed by Pam, and talk to Kim (Isabela Merced) and her dad who regale them with tales of flying to the tropical, glowing sea delights of Jamaica.

Everyone but Mack is entranced, and suddenly all the scary tales Mack has told his kids about predatory birds like nightmarishly twisted herons – the telling of which kick off the film in hilarious fashion as Pam tries to refute Mack’s increasingly lurid tales of wandering doom and gloom – fall away and all Pam and the kids want to do is head to the Caribbean and whole new, albeit seasonally temporary, way of life.

Mack, however, who’s voiced with just the right amount of comedic verve and raw emotional vulnerability by Nanjiani whose gift for delivery of pithy dialogue gems is one of the central joys of a film full of such delights, overrules them and they stay put, watching as all the ducks head south.

A conversation with Mack’s wacky and very alone uncle Dan (Danny DeVito in fine crackpot form) suddenly changes Mack’s mind, and in an instant he goes from fearful to ferociously full-on and the migration is ON.

It’s all thrilling expectation and giddy hope for about five minutes until they find themselves caught up a decaying wooden jetty in a swamp that houses the exact kind of unhinged heron – Carol Kane is an exuberantly manic and gloriously madcap Great Blue Heron named Erin who absolutely makes a scene that confirms all the fears Mack ever had about migrating and yet who impels them onward on a journey they can’t go back on now – and have to escape with frantic flapping and all kinds of fearful utterances.

Migration quickly follows that up with a beautiful scene of the family discovering the transcendent delights of flying through the clouds, a bonding experience that convinces them they’re onto a very good thing … until they reach New York City, a loopy pigeon called Chump (Awkwafina in smashingly OTT passive-aggressive form) and a restaurateur who eats ducks (“What’s Duck a l’orange?” “It’s you,” says Chump, “with l’orange on top.”) and whose Jamaican parrot, Delroy (Keegan-Michael Key) needs some liberating.

The family’s enormously scary moments in NYC serves as a fun-filled if terrifying reminder that setting out to claim your share of fun and adventure doesn’t come without risks or trials.

For all the often-hilarious fun Migration has with the idea of busting apart anxiety and letting your world grow in league with your newly-found bravery, it doesn’t pretend, and reassuringly so, that it’s beer and skittles and holidaying escapism.

There are a good many times, and one of Migration‘s real pleasures is that balances the fear and the excitement to a happily realistic degree (not easy in a happily OTT animated feature romp), where Mack and his family wonder what in the migratory flight path they have let themselves in for.

Sure, the film has a bundle of comedic fun exploiting what it’s like to leap off the cliff and to shatter your comfort zones, and its message, delivered with customary Illumination (think Minions) sweetly manic zaniness, is very much about how good it is to stare down your fears and beat them rather than them beating you.

But it does it in a way that grounds Migration in the truth about what it can cost to leave the safe behind – and is it really safe if it sucks all the life force and excitement out of you? – giving it an unexpected realism that doesn’t belittle anxiety as an issue but which says it’s scary and it’s big and its understandably terrifying but that it can be beaten and done away with, temporary terrors notwithstanding.

Migration is that rare piece animated feature film making, and yes it gets quite Pixar at times in the middle of the frenetic hilarity, wisecracking and one-liner-filled chaos, that absolutely maxes out the narrative and visual advantages of the storytelling form all while keeping hold of quite a moving and sweet inner core of duck-ish humanity.

It’s not easy being silly and loopy and wacky and also deeply contemplative and thoughtful in a story that propels itself along at a rate of richly humourous knots, but Migration manages it with highly entertaining aplomb, delivering laughs and thoughtfulness in equal doses.

Populated by characters who are richly fleshed out (but not with l’orange thank you!), some inspired scenes and dialogue that zings and crackles with bumblingly manic comedy, Migration is a gem of a film, capable of being rawly emotionally honest, inspirationally alive and just plain silly and leaving you feeling like it may be hard to just let yourself go and see what’s out there but that’s it’s oh-so-worth-it and who knows who you might meet along the way and how wonderfully and fundamentally your life might change!

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