Film Review: Migration takes the easy path, but is a fun watch

Birds of a feather flock together in Migration

• Migration
• ★★★☆☆
• Cinema release

The animated yarn Migration (PG) centres on a cute family of mallards headed by Mack (Kumail Nanjiani), an anxious and conservative father who reluctantly agrees to brave the dangers of migrating south from New England when his wife Pam (Elizabeth Banks) and kids Dax (Caspar Jennings) and Gwen (Tresi Gazal) insist that a winter in the gentler climes of Jamaica is exactly what the family needs. 

With Uncle Dan (Danny De Vito) in tow, our feathered friends take flight, and quickly discover that the big bad world is more fond of duck a l’orange than a cautious mallard might prefer. 

It’s all beautifully animated – the mallards’ autumnal home pond looks like Thoreau’s idealised vision of Walden – but the story itself is a standard procession of adventures featuring escapes, rescues and narrow squeaks as our heroes encounter predators, storms, vengeful chefs and the hardboiled pigeons of New York.