Migration(2023)

SHORT VERSION:
After defeating the Chef in one final confrontation in Florida and sending him packing, the Mallards (Mack, Pam, Dax, Gwen, and Uncle Dan) and Delroy – along with a flock of pekins from a duck farm that they saved from the Chef the day before – make it to Jamaica the next morning. Delroy happily reunites with his family, and Mack thanks Pam for spurring him to cast his fear of adventure aside and go on this journey with the family and see that the world is bigger than Moosehead Pond (their home).

The following spring, Pam, Dax, Gwen, and Uncle Dan make ready to head back to Moosehead Pond, but Mack – now showing a much more adventurous spirit – rushes up to them and tells them that he met a bunch of birds who are lost and he told them that he and his family would help them get home. The family quickly discovers that these lost birds are a whole flock of penguins looking to return to the South Pole, but despite initial reservations about making such a trip, they all agree to help Mack take the penguins back there. As the credits roll, we see through a series of hand-drawn animated Polaroid pictures that the Mallards had another crazy and wonderful adventure with the penguins through Central and South America and got them all safely back to the South Pole.


LONG VERSION:
Shortly after the Mallards – Mack, Pam, Dax, Gwen, and Uncle Dan – arrive in New York City, they wind up in Central Park and cross paths with a gang of pigeons led by Chump. After Pam tells Chump that they are in the midst of migrating to Jamaica and have gotten lost, Chump tells them that she has a friend that knows that place like the back of his wing, even though it is a bit of a sore subject for him. She thus brings them to the roof of a fancy restaurant, the Ciguapi, and then leads them through the ventilation ducts into the office of the restaurant’s unnamed owner and head chef (whom shall be referred to as just “Chef”), where she introduces them to Delroy, a scarlet macaw kept in a cage there who was born and raised in Jamaica but was taken from his home by the Chef to be his pet. Delroy gives the Mallards directions to Jamaica, but then he starts sobbing due to depression and homesickness. Feeling sympathy for Delroy, Dax tells him that they will get the key to his cage and free him, but Delroy informs him that the Chef keeps the key on him at all times, and though he can be found in the kitchen two floors below, he warns the ducks that he will make meals out of them if he catches them. Dax decides to go get the key himself, but Mack stops him and tells him that he will take care of it.

Shortly after Mack sneaks into the kitchen, Pam surprises him, having decided that she didn’t want to be left out of this daring task. Though she manages to get the key from the Chef’s jacket while it is hanging on a wall, she and Mack set off a fire extinguisher that partially wrecks the kitchen, alerting the Chef to their presence. Mack and Pam have a frantic flight all around the kitchen while trying to escape back through the main doors, and though the Chef manages to get a hold of them just as they reach the doors, he gets accidentally knocked out with a frying pan by a member of his kitchen staff, who was attempting to whack the ducks with the pan at the same time he grabbed them. Mack and Pam go back out into the restaurant, but just as they start to run back to the office, their path gets obstructed by the restaurant’s patrons when they suddenly get out on the floor to do some salsa dancing. Mack and Pam manage to improvise a salsa dance of their own to navigate through the crowd and up to the next floor without getting harmed, but moments later, the Chef regains consciousness and comes out of the kitchen, and after he spots them, they hurry back to the office while he makes his way through the crowd to get them. Mack and Pam get the key up to the cage, but Mack has difficulty inserting it into the keyhole and then accidentally swallows it. The Chef enters the office moments later, and after a short series of events, Mack ends up being sent flying all around the office until he hits the Chef hard in the face with his butt and renders him unconscious again. This act also causes Mack to spit up the key, which Delroy catches in mid-air and then opens his cage with. He joyfully flies up and breaks through the office’s skylight, with the Mallards and Chump following behind him, and when Delroy comes back down to the rooftop after performing a celebration flight, he thanks the Mallards (especially Mack) for freeing him and tells them that he will take them to Jamaica himself. After saying goodbye to Chump, the Mallards resume their migration with Delroy leading the way.

Some days later, when the birds are just a few hours away from reaching the Florida coast, they are forced to stop when Gwen has to use the bathroom and refuses to relieve herself in mid-flight. However, they soon find what appears to be a paradise for ducks inhabited by a flock of friendly pekins, and their leader, Googoo, invites the migrating birds to stay with them for as long as they like. The Mallards and Delroy initially enjoy themselves, but Dax soon discovers that this “paradise” is actually a duck farm when he sees the Chef – who is one of the farm’s clients and is now sporting an injured nose and right eye – arrive in his semi-truck outside the farm’s gate intending to buy all of the pekins for his restaurant. As the pekins move toward the truck’s open container, thinking that they are being taken on a field trip by the farm’s owners, Dax tries to warn Googoo about what is really in store for him and his flock and then desperately tries to keep him from going inside. Mack takes notice of this and asks Dax what is going on, and after he tells his father that the Chef is here and that the farm’s owners are giving all of the pekins to him so he can cook them, Mack tells Dax that he will handle this problem. Dax protests his decision by insisting that he can help the pekins, but Mack just orders him to go back to his mother right now. However, while Mack is distracted with trying to make Googoo understand the danger that he and his fellow pekins are in, Dax defies his father’s order and sneaks over to the truck and enlightens the other pekins as to why they are really in there. Unfortunately for him, the Chef appears seconds later and puts his foot down on his wings, and though Dax manages to pull them free, he accidentally rips out all of the key feathers he needs for flying. Just after the Chef uses his carving fork to pin Dax to the ground, Mack sees that his son is in danger and comes to his defense by flying at and attacking the Chef. Though this act helps Dax get free, Mack gets knocked out of the air moments later and lands next to Dax. The Chef takes out his butcher knife and makes ready to attack them both, but Mack saves himself and his son by telling the pekins to run now, and they subsequently run all around the Chef’s legs and trip him. The Mallards, Delroy, and the pekins then make their escape by flying away, with the injured Dax having to be carried on his father’s back. Furious at this turn of events, the Chef stomps back to his truck with the intention of pursuing them.

Shortly after the birds reach a seaside town in Florida at sunset, Mack directs them all towards a beachfront hotel so they can rest there for the night. After landing, Mack rebukes Dax for disobeying his order and almost getting himself killed, and Dax – feeling like his father is being ungrateful about his attempt to help out – responds by turning his back on his father and then walking away disappointed. Just after nightfall, the Chef is seen approaching the town in his personal cargo helicopter, and he shines a searchlight all around the ground to try to find the birds. Shortly after Gwen starts hugging Dax away from the rest of the birds to try to make him feel better, the Chef’s helicopter shows up above the birds and wakes them all up. They try to flee, but the Chef drops a large net down on all of them, and Dax and Gwen manage to avoid being captured themselves by hiding from the Chef’s view. The Chef then lifts the birds up into his helicopter and puts them all in a cell storing a bunch of fruits and vegetables for his restaurant, but when he notices that Mack and Pam are among the captured, he puts them both in a small cage, wedges his carving fork into the doors to lock them tight, and then sets the cage down in the cockpit right next to his seat, intending to kill them first when he returns to the Ciguapi for all the trouble that they have caused him. He then starts making his way back to New York City.

While the Chef is distracted with flying the helicopter, Mack and Pam thread their feet through the gaps in the bottom of the cage so they can stand up fully, and then – on a quiet suggestion from Uncle Dan and Delroy – they perform another salsa dance across the floor without making any noise and make their way to the birds’ cell to set them free. Unfortunately, just after they leap up to press the button that will open the cell, the Chef suddenly appears and grabs the cage. However, he puts his face too close to it, and Pam – out of desperation – puts her head through the cage and bites down on his injured nose, causing him to drop them. After processing what just happened to him, the Chef starts to angrily advance towards Mack and Pam, but Delroy leads Uncle Dan and the pekins in an attack on the Chef by throwing all of the produce in their cell at him. Delroy then caps it off by using Uncle Dan to fire a squash directly at the Chef’s face, and though it knocks him silly, it also hits a push button switch mounted on the wall behind him and knocks it to the floor. The dazed Chef then lands face-first on the button that opens the bomb bay doors, which lie directly underneath him, Mack, and Pam, and they all fall out of the helicopter. The Chef is quickly saved when his net falls out after him and catches him upside-down, and though Mack initially saves himself and Pam by grabbing onto the Chef’s long ponytail with his feet, he soon loses his grip, and he and Pam plummet straight towards the ground still stuck in their cage. Accepting that they are going to die, Mack and Pam share one last loving embrace, but thankfully, Dax and Gwen show up to rescue them, with Dax having regained his ability to fly by taking feathers blown off from both Delroy and the pekins back at the hotel when the Chef showed up there and (somehow) attaching them to his damaged wings. Dax and Gwen grab the cage, then yank out the carving fork to get the doors open, saving their parents. When the family shares a hug afterwards, Mack and Dax smile at each other in silent reconciliation. Meanwhile, the rest of the birds use their combined might to bust open the cell door wide enough for them to get out, and then they fly on out of the aircraft and meet back up with the Mallards, leaving the Chef to continue hanging from the helicopter as it keeps on flying on auto-pilot back to New York City while he yells and screams in anger and defeat.

The birds decide to continue flying to Jamaica for the rest of the night, but just before dawn, they are forced to stop and float in the ocean when Delroy loses his bearings. Seconds later, Mack looks at the sea water around him and notices that it is glowing (which he and his family had heard was said to do at night in Jamaica), and then Dax calls for his father to come see something in the distance. As the sun rises, the birds watch as its light illuminates a nearby island, and Delroy immediately recognizes it as Jamaica. With Dax and Gwen leading the way, the birds have a thrilling flight through the jungle before stopping to rest at a beautiful lagoon where many other types of birds have gathered, and Delroy happily reunites with his family while the Mallards meet back up with the family of blue-winged teals that made a pit stop at their home, Moosehead Pond, while they were doing their own migration south (during which their daughter, Kim, met and developed a mutual crush on Dax, and she gives him a big hug when he lands in the lagoon moments later). Mack thanks Pam for spurring him to cast his fear of adventure aside and go on this journey with the family and see that the world is bigger than their pond, and after they hug, they, their children, Uncle Dan, Delroy, the blue-winged teals, the pekins, and all of the tropical birds have a dance party on a beach.

The following spring, Pam, Dax, Gwen, and Uncle Dan make ready to head back to Moosehead Pond, but Mack – now showing a much more adventurous spirit – rushes up to them and tells them that he met a bunch of birds who are lost and he told them that he and his family would help them get home. The family quickly discovers that these lost birds are a whole flock of penguins looking to return to the South Pole, but despite initial reservations about making such a trip, they all agree to help Mack take the penguins back there. As the credits roll, we see through a series of hand-drawn animated Polaroid pictures that the Mallards had another crazy and wonderful adventure with the penguins through Central and South America and got them all safely back to the South Pole.