Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Duck Duck Goose’ On Netflix, With Jim Gaffigan Leading An All-Star Voice Cast

Want to see a movie the whole family (as long as they’re over 7) can watch? Like Jim Gaffigan? Zendaya? Birds? Then Netflix has the film for you, Duck Duck Goose, a Chinese production with an all-star voice cast. Is it worth your time?

DUCK DUCK GOOSE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: It’s autumn in the lush Chinese wilderness. A flock of geese are rehearsing their migration to the hot-spring “Haven” for the winter, led by Bing (Diedrich Bader), who constantly drills into his flock “Birds of a feather migrate together!” But Peng (Jim Gaffigan), a bachelor goose who is dating Bing’s daughter Jinjing (Natasha Leggero), doesn’t feel that way. He’s the best flyer in the flock, but doesn’t want to fall in line and is often late to formation practice, annoying Bing to no end.

During one of his daredevil flights, he crashes into a flock of ducklings being led to a place called “Pleasant Valley”. Among them is Chi (Zendaya) and Chao (Lance Lim). Chi is the older and more mature duckling, all of 16 days old. Chao is constantly hungry but is a fun little brother. They get separated from the flock and get chased by a hungry cat named Banzou (Greg Proops), who has two different personalities to match his red and yellow eyes. They find shelter with Peng, but he wants no part of these “stupid kids.”

But after he wakes up late during migration day, and gets his wing broken in a gong accident (long story), he needs to catch up to his flock before winter sets in. And, while his turtle buddy Larry (Carl Reiner) is willing to walk with him, he’s way too slow. No, he needs someone to walk with who he can basically outrun when the “bad guys” show up. Who better than two young ducklings?

Of course, on the way to getting Chi and Chao back to their flock, they encounter all sorts of obstacles, like a rice paddy irrigation slide, a scary cave, and, of course, the hungry Banzou. Along the way, they also meet a loving chicken mother and father (voiced by Rick Overton and Jennifer Grey) and Peng encounters a squirrel named Carl (Reggie Watts) who helps Peng heal his wing… and his heart!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: About a billion other animated movies where a loner-type goes on a reluctant journey with someone who annoys the heck out of him/her, and they become lifelong friends. Think Shrek, but with more geese and ducks, and a lot less laughs.

Performance Worth Watching: Reiner is good as the slow but wise Larry. But Stephen Fry and Craig Ferguson play two fancy waterfowl (Are they avocets? Cranes? Google isn’t helping us much) named — ahem — Frazier and Giles, and their brief appearances are the highlight of the movie.

Memorable Dialogue: When Peng, Chi and Chao are propelled into the back of a truck carrying a ton of pigs, after some bumps and flying off the top of a hill one pig pins Peng and lets loose with a long fart into Peng’s face. That ought to tell you something.

 

Single Best Shot: The animation of the lake and surrounding mountains where Peng’s flock calls home is spectacular, like in the shot above.

What Age Group Is This For?: Surprisingly, Duck Duck Goose is rated PG, for “rude humor and mild action/peril”. There are a number of scenes where Peng or Chi and Chao are in danger, and a scene in a cave which would scare most kids under 7. Then there’s the fart jokes, and — for some reason — an oblique boner joke as Peng sticks his head up under a tablecloth in a restaurant as he tries to save the ducklings from becoming dinner. Netflix tags the move for kids between 5 and 7, but we’re thinking 7 is the bare minimum.

Our Take: One thing we need to give Duck Duck Goose, directed by Christopher Jenkins (a writer on Surf’s Up), from a screenplay co-written by Jenkins and Rob Muir (a writer for a bunch of animated films and the late-’90s Love Boat revival) is that the animation is top-notch. The movie was made by the well-regarded Chinese animation house Original Force along with the massive Chinese production company Wanda Pictures, and it found American distribution at Cannes last year; no corners were cut creating the visuals, from the animals to the vistas to even the restaurant scene in “Pleasant Valley.”

The voice cast that Jenkins recruited does their jobs with elan; Proops especially leans into his role as the evil and hungry Banzou, and Gaffigan does a nice job portraying Peng, who is just free and single and doesn’t care about going along with the flock. Zendaya as the wise-beyond-her-years Chi is also fun.

But the movie’s story, while nicely-told, is pretty standard, without many twists and turns. There aren’t a ton of laughs to be had, and the generic pop music dropped into the soundtrack during some unnecessary interludes is loud and grating. It’s one of those movies that you put on for your kid and then go about doing the dishes or folding laundry. There isn’t much there for an adult to latch onto, despite the voice talent.

Our Call: SKIP IT. There are better movies for kids that will engage adults and tell a good, twisty story. Despite the all-star voice cast, Duck Duck Goose leaves no lasting imprint.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Where to stream Duck Duck Goose