Storks – Film Review by Fran Winston

Directed by: Nicholas Stoller, Doug Sweetland
Starring the voices of: Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelsey Grammer, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Danny Trejo, Stephen Kramer Glickman

In cinemas October 14th

You can always tell when school holidays are coming up as a glut of “family friendly” movies and animations hit cinemas. And just in time for mid-term comes this offering.

Hamburg plays Junior, the top delivery stork in a company called Cornerstone who is up for a big promotion. The storks have long since stopped delivering babies and are now a courier company and the last baby that was made before production ceased was taken in by them and now works for the company. All Junior has to do is fire her and he gets his promotion. However, before he can tell her the bad news a young boy writes a letter requesting a baby brother which she inadvertently puts into the system and the pair find themselves trying to deliver the rogue baby before the big bosses find out.

This starts off well but it loses its way as it goes on. It has numerous story threads happening and it doesn’t quite seem to know where to go with them all. The animation is fantastic and all the voice actors do a great job. It’s just that the story becomes somewhat rambling. Its heart remains in the right place throughout and there are some good back and forths between the various characters but it doesn’t really seem to know what it wants to be.

Also, a feature of most modern animation is that it is multi layered in order to appeal to both adults and Little Ones and this doesn’t quite hit that level it attempts to. Overall it seems to be trying to copy what it thinks is a template for the perfect animation and just doesn’t always hit the mark.

It should entertain kids (although you may have lots of awkward questions about where babies come from afterwards) but it doesn’t really have enough depth for adults and the chaotic plot will leave some people scratching their heads. This is cute enough to kill time on a rainy midterm afternoon but far from having the makings of a beloved family favourite.