Migration (2023) [4K UHD Review]

Migration was Illumination’s Christmas season release about ducks migrating to a better life. Honestly, it was about more than that, but this is one of the movies you have to watch multiple times because kids are yelling or you’ve become Alfred Pennyworth during the showing. By the time you actually get to sit down and enjoy it, the film is about to show up on Peacock and it’s already on home video. Such is the life of a modern adult. Scoff now, Tik Tok influencers. It will happen to you too!

It had to be ducks

Ducks are naturally funny. They’re harmless creatures to most humans and they aren’t aggressive. From an early age of stuffed animals and cartoon, every Westerner under the age of 85 has been pushed into treating them like comical foils. Migration could have been a live action tale about a real world family moving, but there is something friendly for kids in turning them into a pack of ducks migrating South. After all, who wouldn’t want to grab a couple of friends and take a trip to Jamaica?

You’ll swear you’ve seen Migration before

Mike White is an amazing screenwriter and I made sure the kids watched his early work after Migration ended. They weren’t amused, but that is the price you pay for trying to raise movie guys and gals. We don’t use the term cinephile in this dojo. While finally getting to sit down and watch Migration without a kid screaming at me, I came to realize something. I missed nothing about this movie when I couldn’t hear 80% of the plot.

The parents played by Elizabeth Banks and Kumail Nanjiani are trying to take their kids and Uncle Dan to Jamaica. They meet a Macaw with an accent that will probably cause a YouTube video essay and Awkwafina cashing a check. Literally, you can see her processing the amount of tax she’s going to have to pay as a Pigeon or a one legged bird of sorts. At this point in the third screening, I had another kid screaming because Netflix locked them out saying that they were trying to get additional people on the account.

They weren’t, as kids are too poor to travel and I had to scroll through Netflix’s latest cash grab ploy to get a movie playing so I could return to Migration. By this time, I finally finished Migration and was like something seemed familiar. A family leaves their home for an ideal Paradise while caring for a wacky relative? I don’t care if they are ducks, migrant workers and retired Boston firefighters; after awhile…everything bleeds together.

There should really be a study about the history of kid features

Whether it’s animation or live-action, most kid movies follow a handful of formulas. Parents die and new authority figures take them in, a kid has to move, a kid loses a friend, a kid and an animal bond or a kid has to grow up due to something else tends to be the big catch-alls. Already I had another writer yell about The Bad News Bears. My answer to that is it was a sports movie and that throws a wrench into the works.

But, it’s bizarre that you can take a century of kid films and neatly throw them into five buckets. I get what it says about kids and honestly it’s not wrong. Most kids are literally a shining light or buzzing noise away from abandoning movies as they have slaughtered other media throughout the years. Don’t believe me? Then go to your parents’ house and try to play with your old Tiger Handheld games and tell me you are having fun. I want to see pics on Instagram of your 48 year old self smiling through Mega Man 2 on that awful platform.

But, I had a point when this started and that point was…Migration is following a proud tradition of bland kid entertainment. I used to get annoyed by that, but just be happy any kid is watching any movie right now.

Migration arrives on 4K UHD with a rather packed release

Migration continues a killer tradition of staggering 4K UHD releases. You get 3 mini movies from Illumination, a ton of special features and honestly every special feature you’ve come to expect on these releases since the Minions debuted. That’s not a bad thing and I wish Pixar kept releasing packages like this.

The A/V Quality is pretty sharp as you can tell from the 4K screenshots that will hopefully be appearing throughout this review. The Dolby Atmos track is full and makes what could have been pretty pedestrian flying scenes into fully realized environmental action. Great stuff all around and well worth a purchase to families.

Migration 4K UHD is available now!