While Illumination managed to pull themselves out of their recent funk with the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, I was still a bit sceptical about whether that would be a fluke or not. It’s highly unlikely that the studio would be able to keep bringing back the geniuses behind Teen Titans Go! To The Movies for every release going forward, and given their previous track record of trying to relive past glories, there’s just something about how generic this film comes across on first glance that had me worried. Well, that and being written by Mike White, whose last animated venture was with the generation-defining disaster of The Emoji Movie. However, not only does this manage to keep up with that Mario-mentum (oh shush, I liked that one), but it taps back into what I originally started liking about Illumination Studios specifically.
The premise is simple enough: A family of mallard ducks manage to convince their decidedly unadventurous dad (Kumail Nanjiani’s Mack) to go on a group migration to Jamaica. It is at its heart an adventure flick, since there’s not really a whole lot in the way of character growth in any meaningful sense. So, to keep things entertaining, the filmmakers decided to prove Mack right by making every single pit stop of their adventure absolutely nerve-racking. Like, not since Don Bluth’s heyday has an animated family film been so gleeful about putting its main characters through the anxiety wringer, pitting the Mallards against crazed herons, a pigeon street gang, a cult-ish duck farm, and an obsessed chef.
Illumination’s animation as guided by director Benjamin Renner (better known for more minimalist features like Ernest & Celestine and The Big Bad Fox And Other Tales…) is fantastic at really getting across how unsettling the everyday world is for those who rarely traverse it. The herons are freaky enough on their own, but being set up in a darkened swamp shack heightens that reaction, as does the fog permeating New York City until it looks like Silent Hill. Even the moody lights of the chef’s restaurant, as beautiful as that dance sequence is with a salsa cover of Destiny's Child’s Survivor playing over it, give it a foreboding atmosphere.
As straight-forward as the plot is, the visual presentation does a lot to bulk up the themes within it, concerning the legitimate thrill of adventure and how the world can be a scary place. There’s a decent balance between the fear invoked by these locales and characters, and the glee in being able to spread your wings, as it were. Just as it is regularly quite scary (like, even some actual horror movies I saw this year didn’t get under my skin as much as this family film from the Minions people), when the Mallards and the feathered allies they pick up along the way get a chance to enjoy the ride, it is blissful. That sequence with them playing among the clouds with that gorgeous sunshine dancing off of those celestial pillows is one of the best things Illumination has ever put together.
There’s something morbidly refreshing about a family film that is this willing to terrify the children watching it. Much like how Illumination’s better features to date were tributes to the old guard of animation like Looney Tunes, this is closer to the attitude in the ‘70s and ‘80s where animators were more willing to make their characters (and in turn the audience) earn that happy ending. Beyond this showing that Illumination is in a better place than they have been in previous years, it’s also just a really fun animated adventure.
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