You could do worse at half-term than this new family animation from Illumination (the studio behind Sing and Minions). It’s a zany caper about a family of mallards; it’s not particularly original, with ideas and laughs that feel a little dusty, like they’ve been cobbled from bits and bobs knocking around the studio. But there are enough high jinks – as well as a seriously cute duckling – to keep it on the flight path.
In New England, a daddy duck called Mack (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani) is risk-averse and overprotective of his two kids: teenager Dax (Caspar Jennings) and that adorable duckling, Gwen (Tresi Gazal). Somehow, the kids twist Mack’s wing into migrating south for the first time, and what follows is a series of scrapes as the family fly to Jamaica. After a wrong turn they crash-land in New York, where the animators go to town on a gaggle of realistic-looking pigeons whose aggro leader has an unsightly rotted-off foot and is brilliantly voiced by Awkwafina with a Noo Yoik hoodlum accent.
