Page 8 - Benjamin Renner News Today

Can the Mallard family survive their first family flight? Jeffrey Harris checks in with his official review of Illumination's Migration.

Illumination, maker of “Despicable Me,“ “Sing” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” has built its animation empire by mostly staying close to a child-like outlook. Illumination’s in-house mascots, the Minions, are basically themselves careening toddlers. But the studio’s latest, “Migration,” carries a faintly more parental perspective. Its central character is a father duck, Mack Mallard […]

"Migration" is very comfortably the second-best heron-featuring movie in theaters right now. Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" is far richer in both its imagination and its menagerie of avian life.

Turning “The White Lotus” creator Mike White loose on an animated movie from the “Minions” gang might have seemed fraught with irreverent potential, but the result, “Migration,” follows a familiar, not-particularly-inspired flight plan. About the best one can say about this mildly fun film is that it runs a brisk 80-something minutes, meaning parents can take the kids and have time left over for other holiday errands.

Review by Brian Lowry, CNN

For the Oscar-nominated director, the move from small, intimate films like ‘Ernest & Celestine’ to a major studio production meant learning to rely on a much bigger team and find new ways to communicate story ideas, designs, gags, and creative sensibilities; produced by Illumination CEO and founder Chris Meledandri, the film hits theaters today, December 22.   

Illumination and Universal's latest animated feature is in theaters, and now we'll tell you if Migration is streaming at home as well.

Migration may pass the time, but my guess is that those kids will retain more lasting memories of whatever their parents got for them at the concession stand than anything up there on the screen.

Box Office: 'Aquaman 2' Sees $4.5M Previews, 'Migration' $1.5M

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