Hard-edged story for such a soft subject.
Storks
Grade: C
Directors: Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors), Doug Sweetland
Screenplay: Stoller
Cast: voices of Andy Samberg (Hotel Transylvania), Jennifer Aniston (We’re the Millers)
Rating: PG
Runtime: 89 min
by John DeSando
“No! Just a brief exposure to baby cuteness can ruin your life!” Junior (voice of Andy Samberg)
Actually, Storks is not as cute as that quote, for part of it has a hard edge I find disconcerting for a kid-friendly animation. That storks no longer deliver babies in favor of a delivery contract service like Amazon’s ambitious plans forms the conflict of the story whose resolution you could compose right now. The film is hard until the babies arrive, as is true in life itself.
The conceit of their not delivering babies anymore still leaves kids without a clue about how the babies are born and delivered. The lack of an adequate explanation compounds the already difficult task parents have explaining the origins of babies anyway. For much of the film, the world is a bleak, sterile place where an orphan with soul, Tulip (voice of Katie Crown), is about to lose her job at Stork Mountain because of her accident-prone imagination.
Hunter (voice of Kelsey Grammer), the head of the company, represents tycoons who are in business for the bucks, and he is out of the baby business to deliver inert packages. Junior hooks up with Tulip to deliver an unwanted baby, encountering various challenges on the way to the home, including an amusing pack of wolves (“I’m gonna devour this thing.” Then wolf licks baby, who coos).
The story picks up and move to warmth the closer the heroes get to delivering the babies. Perhaps I was turned off by the stork figures that have a beak tough to make varied or even likeable.
Important, too, is a married couple so mired in their work they ignore their loving boy, who orders a baby brother to love. The comment on the distracted parents is a poignant criticism of the overextended modern husband and wife.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
