LogFAQs > #986118909

Evillord: The director on this one is Benjamin Renner, who also did Ernest & Celestine and The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, two movies I enjoyed greatly and that shared a delightful traditionally animated style. I was aware of this movie ever since the last Animated ranking because of this, and I can't help but pronounce the title as if it's in French because of the director's nationality, but I never particularly wanted to see it. I was very much concerned that Renner's comedic skills would get steamrolled over by corporate American family comedy and the animation style just isn't nearly as attention grabbing. Then I got jumpscared by the Illumination logo in the opening and started feeling very concerned indeed... but you know, I thought this one was alright. It definitely has more fun or memorable sections than my bottom five films: the scene where the birds fly among the clouds above NYC and you see the tallest buildings begin to emerge among the mist, the part where the mom and dad birds have to navigate a dance floor and start their own slow dance to get through, the image of the son bird swooping in on his wax wings to save his parents, the joyful first moment where the Macaw gets released from his cage... but I don't know how much of this will stick in my memory in even a week's time. I think the film successfully conveys a fun and breezy mood but it does err into tacky territory with some of the celebrity voice roles and jokes that overstay their welcome, like the part where the Awkwafina pigeon keeps getting hit by a car.
These are some middle-class ass ducks. I'm pretty sure the reason birds migrate is that their regular habitats become too cold for them to survive in the winter, but this never comes up in the opening scene where the helicopter parent of a dad duck is hesitant to bring his family on an expensive Caribbean vacation. The only thing that convinces him to go is that getting out of the house (or rather the pond) for once makes him feel less like his lazy bachelor uncle voiced by Danny DeVito, who I wish they didn't decide to bring along on the trip. Later on in the film there is a nice story beat where the son duck loses some feathers from his wings fighting the villain, rendering him unable to fly. I started to think they might be boldly including actual consequences to a story event that would affect the character in the long term, however the duck quickly overcomes his injury by culturally appropriating the plumage of the Jamaican Macaw who is played by Keegan Michael-Key (Illumination always wants him in the film it would seem) doing a stereotypical comedy accent. In the post-credits scene, we see that the daughter duck has been holding a crocodile hostage and keeping him on a leash against his will while the family stays in Jamaica, which could be argued to have unfortunate implications when you consider that all of these animals are portrayed as being equally sentient. Also when they meet the pigeons led by Awkwafina the fat uncle tries to take food from them and the mom duck has to Karen her way out of the situation with her White Woman Powers. Well, it's no surprise that this is the type of audience an American animated film is trying to cultivate, but it did give me an underlying desire to see the whole family end up as foie gras.
I think my biggest sticking point with this one is the recurring presence of an evil chef who looks like he belongs in the Hotel Transylvania films. His introduction when the ducks are trying to rescue the Macaw from him actually looks cool, and I like that while all the animals talk he never says a word, but his repeated appearances start to become a little eye-rolling and take away from the chill road trip vibe that characterizes the film at its best. Oh well, this one was alright and probably takes the title of my favorite film where Illumination was involved.

Mythiot: 6.5

Johnbobb: This was probably the animated movie I was least looking forward to, a movie about talking ducks getting into goofy hijinks, Illumination style just didn't sound like a fun time. As it turns out? Yeah, eh, it wasn't great. Pretty one-dimensional characters and hyped kid-friendly animation meant to keep their eyes on the screen without much deeper substance. Which isn't even really to say I'm against movies putting style first, but when your "wow" factor is just animated birds flying around, there's not much overly impressive in that department either. And just the goofiest nonsense villain with one of the most appallingly ugly character designs. I didn't hate the movie, but I'm doing the write-up immediately because I feel like I'll have forgotten what happened by tomorrow.
Except that awful, Apple Jacks-esque stereotyped Jamaican accent, what the hell was that

Favorite 1/2 star Letterboxd review:
This movie is just travel propaganda. Travel isnt everything. Travel is not necessary to life. Travel sucks! Seeing new places sucks. No point to it.