2018 was not a bad year for animated movies. Yes, we got two of the lousiest Batman movies, a sequel nobody wanted to a movie nobody wanted and Smallfoot, but it also gave us Isle of Dogs, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Incredibles 2 and Mirai of the Future. It's tempting to say 2018 is one of the better years for animation of the 2010s in general. However, with everything good, of course there was some pretty bad stuff, and though Sherlock Gnomes was pretty bad, this was the worst animated movie of 2018.
After he gets separated from his flock, Peng has to head to the hot springs before winter arrives. What keeps him from getting there are a broken wing and two little ducklings being hunted by psychotic, split personality cat. That's pretty much the whole plot, and as expected it's as bare bones as it sounds. Most of the opening is filler of Peng flying around which, I guess is supposed to look impressive, but all I could think of when I was watching was how much time was wasted on animated these scenes. The movie is mostly a road-trip movie, it goes from one locale to the next, stopping for a joke or a character moment.
Peng is your standard unlikable protagonist, egotistical, full of himself and with a disregard for the authority of others. He's the kind of protagonist that literally starts his journey wanting to get some young children to tag along on his journey so they can get eaten. The duckling Chi is your typical child character that thinks she has to take on a more mature role, and tries to play off her young age as "Not that young". Her brother, Chao is your token big eating doofus with a heart, and that's all he is. Those are the main characters and they are all characters I don't want to spend the movie with. We've seen characters like Peng before, only this one tries to get children eaten. We've seen characters like Chi and Chao before, and done better too. The side characters are also annoying or unlikable, like the birds that mock Peng for having a broken wing and make fun of the fact that he might get eaten or freeze to death. The hippie squirrel that is annoying, and the head goose that literally tries to tell his daughter Peng is dead, and I think tries to mate with her... Yeah that scene was weird.
The villain is bland. He has the whole Smegol and Gollum thing, but unlike Gollum, he's not an interesting character. The best I can really say is that he is the best character in the movie, which is not really high praise.
As a comedy, the humour falls flat on it's tail. Toilet humour is abundant in this movie, because "it be a movie for kids and kids like toilet humour". When I first saw this movie, the only joke that made me crack an actual smile, was an erection joke. Which I would assume was for the two or three parents who were actually being parents and watching this movie with their kids. The humour never really reaches past the idea of "farting is funny" and there really is no clever writing or witty dialogue, making this one of those movies that only has "adult" humour to warrant a PG rating.
The animation of this movie is okay, only when things are moving quickly does it look weird, but the animation is fluid and colourful, characters look how they're supposed to, and there aren't any animation errors, at least none that I could see. Though the animation is fine it's not a great looking film. There are moments that are supposed to look nice, but all I could think of while watching them was how much better they would look with a studio like Disney, or DreamWorks behind it, though they might have made a better movie entirely.
Duck Duck Goose contains very little content for anyone over the age of five, and even then that's being generous. I find that a good kid's movie has things for everyone, good characters, good humour, engaging stories, these are things that the best kids movies have. The worst always pander to the kids in the audience, and they always end up with movies that people look back on and wonder what was wrong with their tastes as a kid. Nothing was wrong, that's how these movies work, they entertain you as a kid and when you have your own kids, you show it to them. Kids deserve better movies than Duck Duck Goose.
It's 2019 as of the writing of this review, and there are literally hundreds of amazing animated movies out there, plenty of them are rated G and PG. Movies with beautiful artistry, engaging story and characters, and are timeless, kids from today can always enjoy movies like The Land Before Time or Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and those movies have aspects that older viewers can enjoy. Duck Duck Goose does not have any qualities of those movies, it's just a movie that was made to distract children while their parents do something else. This is a movie I think people should avoid, there are so much better things to watch, and for children to watch.
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