7/10
Fast-paced and cute.
This is one of those movies that is perfect for a specific moment: it is perfect for when you get home after a long day of work and you are tired. You don’t want to think or be involved in some demanding artsy drama or war movie. You just want some bright primary colors and comedy to entertain you without making you feel bored. In short, you want to feel like a baby again. That’s where Storks fits the bill. As a tired working slave, I loved this movie 🙂
Here’s the thing: animated movies like this are produced a dime a dozen these days. Take the Angry Birds movie. Every idea is an excuse to produce an animated feature, because they are crazily popular and bring in big cash. So Storks feels like it was part of a list of movies, a result of a brainstorm session on a Friday afternoon a year ago, and given a go-ahead with the attitude of “whatever, just make something and it will generate revenue”.
But the surprise is that Storks is still so funny and still looks so great. I don’t think that there was any great vision behind this movie, but the creative team at Warner Animation must just be really talented to maintain a high level of quality. The synchronization between the animation and the voices is especially good. Katie Crown voices Tulip, a human girl who’s living with the storks. Crown already had experience in voice work for the animated series Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. And Andy Samberg (famous from the Lonely Island sketches) voices Junior, the stork who is ready to take his father’s place as big boss. The body language and facial expressions are a precise match to the voices.
Tulip and Junior try to deliver a baby, and start acting like a mom and dad in their adventures. Meanwhile, they are being tracked by an evil pigeon. You’ll see the story’s conclusion from a mile off. The emotional twists and turns are all very standard. Everything happens on cue, you know what I mean: at 10:00 the story starts off properly, at 1:00:00 everything threatens to fall apart, and at 1:20:00 it all works out well.
Is Storks a super loaded movie? Does it make points about overpopulation? Does it have messages about the joy and/or horror of having babies? Does it address the tension between corporate hell and finding the work that you were born to do? Nah, stop it. Don’t take it seriously. It won’t enter the annals of animated classics, but it is decent enough.
A Sky of Books and Movies 