Year: 2016
Director: Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland
Starring: Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, and Anton Starkman
Tagline: Find your flock
Synopsis: Instead of delivering babies, storks now deliver packages. But when a baby is accidentally created, Junior (a stork) and Tulip (an orphan) must work together to get her to her proper home.
Tagline: Find your flock
Synopsis: Instead of delivering babies, storks now deliver packages. But when a baby is accidentally created, Junior (a stork) and Tulip (an orphan) must work together to get her to her proper home.
Review
Before the feature film, there was a Lego Ninjago short film. It was amusing enough, involving a ninja master in an epic battle with a chicken as related by an increasingly flustered narrator.
When I saw the trailers for Storks, I thought it had potential for a few laughs. But it also looked like it would have elements that would grow old very quickly. And that's pretty much how the film plays out. Some things work. Some things don't. Some gags made me chuckle. Other gags made me roll my eyes.
The character Pigeon Toady fell into the latter category. I was pretty much annoyed whenever he was on screen. Is he a spoof of something?
The wolf pack, on the other hand, I found rather amusing. The film is made by Warner Bros., and the wolf pack seems to hearken back to the zany antics of Looney Tunes characters. Who knew wolves could form their pack into suspension bridges, submarines, and minivans (to name a few)?
Perhaps the funniest moment in the film comes when the baby is asleep and a fight to claim her takes place between Junior/Tulip and a waddle* of penguins. So as not to wake the baby, they have a silent fight complete with muffled screams. Again, it is very much in the vein of Bugs, Daffy, and Wile E. Coyote.
[* Yes, "waddle" is the collective noun for penguins on land.]
As for the plot itself, there's not a lot to it. We mainly follow Junior and Tulip as they try to get the baby to her human family without the rest of the storks finding out, since storks now deliver packages and not babies. The story goes at a reasonably good clip, but it still felt a bit slow because I didn't particularly like either of the main characters.
The human subplot was much more interesting and I think more relatable. Nate is a lonely boy with workaholic parents. So, he does the only logical thing: he writes a letter asking the storks to send him a baby brother (with ninja skills). This ends up as a catalyst for his parents to start spending time with him and bonding as a family. By the time they do get their bundle of joy, they are ready as a family to receive her. (It's a kids movie; that shouldn't be much of a spoiler.)
As middling as the story and characters are, as I've thought about Storks, I've found myself liking it most of all for the message it contained. (It could have done a lot more with it, but the message was there nonetheless.) For thousands of years, storks delivered babies. That was what they did. Cue the modern day when baby delivery became viewed as being fraught with too many hazards and not enough profitability. That's when storks decided to get out of the baby business and deliver easier, safer, more profitable packages instead.
As the film progresses, we get a sense that something is missing in the lives of the storks. Their purpose has been lost. They've sold their birthright for something easier. They stopped filling the measure of their creation. And when the storks again find their purpose, I felt a twinge of emotion, because right there, in the middle of this zany kids movie, is a nugget of truth. Be who you were born to be, even when it is the more difficult path to follow.
While Storks is far from the best animated film I've seen this summer, it also isn't the worst. [**cough** Ice Age 5 **cough**] It has its moments that make it worth a Redbox or Netflix night.
When I saw the trailers for Storks, I thought it had potential for a few laughs. But it also looked like it would have elements that would grow old very quickly. And that's pretty much how the film plays out. Some things work. Some things don't. Some gags made me chuckle. Other gags made me roll my eyes.
The character Pigeon Toady fell into the latter category. I was pretty much annoyed whenever he was on screen. Is he a spoof of something?
The wolf pack, on the other hand, I found rather amusing. The film is made by Warner Bros., and the wolf pack seems to hearken back to the zany antics of Looney Tunes characters. Who knew wolves could form their pack into suspension bridges, submarines, and minivans (to name a few)?
Perhaps the funniest moment in the film comes when the baby is asleep and a fight to claim her takes place between Junior/Tulip and a waddle* of penguins. So as not to wake the baby, they have a silent fight complete with muffled screams. Again, it is very much in the vein of Bugs, Daffy, and Wile E. Coyote.
[* Yes, "waddle" is the collective noun for penguins on land.]
As for the plot itself, there's not a lot to it. We mainly follow Junior and Tulip as they try to get the baby to her human family without the rest of the storks finding out, since storks now deliver packages and not babies. The story goes at a reasonably good clip, but it still felt a bit slow because I didn't particularly like either of the main characters.
The human subplot was much more interesting and I think more relatable. Nate is a lonely boy with workaholic parents. So, he does the only logical thing: he writes a letter asking the storks to send him a baby brother (with ninja skills). This ends up as a catalyst for his parents to start spending time with him and bonding as a family. By the time they do get their bundle of joy, they are ready as a family to receive her. (It's a kids movie; that shouldn't be much of a spoiler.)
As middling as the story and characters are, as I've thought about Storks, I've found myself liking it most of all for the message it contained. (It could have done a lot more with it, but the message was there nonetheless.) For thousands of years, storks delivered babies. That was what they did. Cue the modern day when baby delivery became viewed as being fraught with too many hazards and not enough profitability. That's when storks decided to get out of the baby business and deliver easier, safer, more profitable packages instead.
As the film progresses, we get a sense that something is missing in the lives of the storks. Their purpose has been lost. They've sold their birthright for something easier. They stopped filling the measure of their creation. And when the storks again find their purpose, I felt a twinge of emotion, because right there, in the middle of this zany kids movie, is a nugget of truth. Be who you were born to be, even when it is the more difficult path to follow.
While Storks is far from the best animated film I've seen this summer, it also isn't the worst. [**cough** Ice Age 5 **cough**] It has its moments that make it worth a Redbox or Netflix night.
Quotable Quotes
- "Orphan Tulip?" "Tulip is fine. 'Orphan' hurts my heart." -- Junior and Tulip
- "Wolf pack submarine!" [The wolves form themselves into a submarine.] "What is happening?" -- Alpha Wolf and Junior
- "Don't worry. She's with penguins. There are whole documentaries about how great they are at baby-sitting." -- Hunter
ISFS
No comments:
Post a Comment