Migration is basically Finding Nemo but without the Dead Mom.
I saw this with the monster and Dad mostly so that the monster would be able to say she had seen the Consolidated theater’s amazing intro. I’m not going to post it here because if you don’t know what I’m talking about you have a wonderful treat awaiting you in Hawaii someday.
The cast is really wonderful: Elizabeth Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Danny DeVito, Awkwafina–kind of a weird one for Kumail Nanjiani if I’m being completely honest. The fact that the arch villain, a chef who actually sounds kind of awesome besides the fact that he’s pretty abusive to his staff, doesn’t speak at all is very cool. Most of the best scenes, parodies of genre tropes from horror films, are contained in the first act, thinking specifically of the nightmare cabin and later the suicide cult on the farm. There’s this game that the movie seems like it’s flirting with playing: how much of Marlin, sorry, “Mack Mallard’s” distrust of people is misplaced and to what extent will he learn that we only progress through life through the kindness of others. But there aren’t actually a lot of those Candide-esque vibes the further the movie unwinds. It’s really just about how completely unhinged this one chef is.
The Taylor Swift song from the trailer, which surely cost an arm and a leg to acquire in the year of our Mom, Taylor, is not actually in the movie, which is a shame. The monster, for whom we saw this movie in the first place, seemed kind of bored the whole time? I think it was maybe hard to distinguish the birds and their motivations? But also I get it because the stakes are so so incredibly low and it’s so hard to read emotions on their little CGI faces? She also seemed genuinely confused and then delighted by the sequel to the Minions no one asked for at the beginning.
