STORKS (2016)

Genre: CG Animation
Director: Nicholas Stoller
Cast:  Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Danny Trejo
Runtime: 1 hr 22 mins
Rating: PG
Released By: Warner Bros
Official Website: http://www.storksmovie.com

Opening Day: 22 September 2016

Synopsis: Storks deliver babies...or at least they used to. Now they deliver packages for global internet retail giant Cornerstore.com. Junior (Andy Samberg), the company's top delivery stork, is about to be promoted when the Baby Factory is accidentally activated on his watch, producing an adorable - and wholly unauthorized - baby girl. Desperate to deliver this bundle of trouble before the boss gets wise, Junior and his friend Tulip, the only human on Stork Mountain, race to make their first-ever baby drop, in a wild and revealing journey that could make more than one family whole and restore the storks' true mission in the world.

Movie Review:

If you’re expecting ‘Storks’ to be yet another big-studio cartoon cut from familiar thematic moulds, let’s just say that you’ll probably find yourself quite disoriented. Oh yes, right from the beginning, there is something decidedly unorthodox about its premise of titular avians having given up on their traditional business of manufacturing and delivering babies for an Amazon-like courier service known as Cornerstore.com. Whereas hopeful couples used to be able to write a letter to Stork Mountain and have their wishes come true via an elaborate baby-manufacturing assembly line operation, the long-billed birds have abandoned that task ever since one of their kind Jasper (Danny Trejo) grew too attached to one of the newborns Tulip (Katie Crown) and stranded her at their facility by accidentally destroying the gizmo containing her delivery address.

And so the story goes that the business’s star performer Junior (Andy Samberg) will be promoted to CEO if he can fire Tulip, whose clumsiness and dangerous inventions have made her a liability the outfit can well do without. Yet the intrinsically good-hearted Junior cannot quite summon the managerial mettle to do so; instead, he stashes her in the warehouse’s long-dormant baby-making wing and instructing her never to leave the premises. Meanwhile, the packed story also sees a precocious young boy Nate (Anton Starkman) ignored by his workaholic realtor parents Henry and Sarah (Ty Burrell and Jennifer Aniston) place an order for a baby brother with ninja skills. Put two and two together, and you can guess how Junior and Tulip eventually end up with an adorable pink-haired infant that they have to deliver to Nate’s family secretly and without incident.

If that sounds like an awfully convoluted plot for a road movie, you’re probably right. Like his live-action comedies ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’, writer-director Nicholas Stoller’s first foray into the animated genre boasts his similar freewheeling style. And yet, amidst the weird disjointed adventure likely to confuse kids and give their parents a bit of a head-scratcher, there are such inventive displays of wit and humour that you won’t mind going along with this screwball-quick, frenetic and cheerfully nonsensical movie. Indeed, Stoller’s offbeat comedic sensibility is firmly intact, especially in a running gag involving a wolf pack led by Alpha Wolf (Keegan-Michael Key) and Beta Wolf (Jordan Peele) with amazing shape-shifting abilities which allow them to transform swiftly into suspension bridges, speedboats and submarines in pursuit of their prey.

Other expertly tooled diversions include a hilarious fight scene where Junior and Tulip do battle with a waddle of sinister white-eyed penguins in silence to avoid waking the baby, and a bro-ish pigeon antagonist Toady (Stephen Kramer Glickman) who also wants to be the next CEO-in-line. It is madcap no doubt, and yet in between the Chuck Jones/ Friz Freleng antics, Stoller and his co-director Doug Sweetland (director of the Oscar-nominated Pixar short ‘Presto’) insert surprisingly resonant snapshots of parenting. One scene has Junior and Tulip mirroring two fatigued parents bickering over how to rock the baby to sleep, and another has them each taking turns to distract the baby while the other tries to feed her. On Henry and Sarah’s part, the perpetually preoccupied parents learn to put their business on hold and help their neglected son add a tornado slide and landing platform onto their roof.

In most part, the lively rapport between the talented cast ensemble also help to speed through the story’s convolutions – and besides the tried-and-true banter between Key and Peele, you’ll be pleasantly surprised too by the back-and-forth between Samberg and newcomer Crown. It probably isn’t a coincidence that this sophomore project from Warner Animation Group (whose maiden claim-to-fame was Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s ‘The Lego Movie’) unfolds with the same rapid-fire visual and verbal delivery as the pair of executive producers’ previous work, though ‘Storks’ is far too ambitious to just follow slavishly in its predecessor’s footsteps. Like we said at the start, it does take a little getting used to, but once it hits the road, we reassure you that this free-spirited animation delivers. 

Movie Rating:

(Screwball-quick, frenetic and cheerfully nonsensical, this gleefully unconventional animated comedy delivers the laughs and some surprisingly resonant snapshots of parenting)

Review by Gabriel Chong