Illumination has struck again, much like the flock of geese struck that airplane Sully was flying. Migration is one of those animated films that follows the formula set by other films like it, but it isn’t sure where to make good choices. The end result is like playing Duck Hunt and missing all your shots. I skipped the theatrical release and waited for Peacock. I’m proud of that choice.

Kumamoto Nanjiani plays the patriarch of a little duck family, with a wife (Elizabeth Banks), an uncle (Danny Devito) and two ducklings. He’s always been afraid his whole life of leaving their pond, but when a neighboring family talks about migrating south, and he realizes he might end up alone like his uncle, he jumps into action and flies the family on a destination vacation.

Along the way, we make some creative stops to fill time, and answer a lot of the “what if a duck did this” type of jokes. Like, the movie has the daughter duckling afraid to use the bathroom while flying, and she needs her privacy. There’s a scene here also that is way too close to Chicken Run: Dawn Of The Nugget, though these movies came out almost at the exact same time, so it would be impossible to copy each other. It just happened that the joke was so obvious, it was made twice.

My biggest problem with the movie, is that for some reason, the folks at Illumination lost their damn minds. Like, certifiable. I’m all about a great villain, but elevating a shitty villain, and trying to find a way to fit them in the most unnecessary places is noticeably terrible. Along their journey, the ducks encounter a chef who… cooks ducks. They escape him, and free some Jamaican ducks in the process. Cool. We did that scene. Now moving on… oh shit.

We can’t move on, because this guy is like the fucking terminator. The family flies an indeterminate distance, landing at a farm, where lo and behold the same chef shows up looking for new ducks to eat. Then the ducks get away again. Hopefully for the last… oh fuck me sideways.

Then, they put this chef in his own helicopter, scouring, I guess the whole fucking world now, trying to find these ducks, and he happens to find them at this motel. And they aren’t even out in the open to make this easier. No, this dude is like leave no stone unturned levels of insanity. And it is all the worst thing to happen to this film. he is so poorly developed at the beginning when we first meet him that it is baffling how much of this film he is in, and how much of the plot he controls. The filmmakers throw out logic and reason, and turn on the dumb switch, and hope that everyone likes the animation enough to give them a pass.

I liked the voice cast, the film did start off exploring some interesting ideas, but it heavily loses its way at the midpoint, and crashes and burns. Your kids will spend most of the movie thinking about your protagonists being eaten, which is never really a great look for a movie.

Peacock doesn’t let me thank specific narrators or companies, as I always get pushed into another film almost immediately. Whoever did do this, I thought did some nice work. The narrator fits the film, I was never lost, and I thought the descriptions of the characters was solid. So, all things considered, solid audio description. I’d love to say watch the first half, then shut the movie off. That’s not a grade, but it should be.

Final Grade: C