Storks (2016)
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Storks Movie Review
Storks is a 2016 animated comedy film directed by Nicholas Stoller and starring Andy Samberg. It is a fun, but awfully frenetic movie.
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“I’m gonna devour this thing!“
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It follows one stork and a girl who set out to deliver the baby. The film comes from Warner Animation Group and is their second film after ‘The Lego Movie’. Now it shares many similarities with that film in terms of the humor and it also shares many of its weaknesses. Once again we get an overly modern, hip animated movie with a tendency to go into excessive action territory with a ridiculously fast pace.
Now this is definitely a problem that the team has to fix in their future efforts, but I still think they have a lot of potential as both of these movies have their moments and are very entertaining to watch. Storks definitely feels like a traditional cartoon which is a good thing as rarely do we see fun, not serious animated films these days, but to me its modern approach to humor and characterization definitely hurt it in the long run.
Junior is a typical, but fun main character. Tulip I liked quite a bit, especially in the first act where her humor shined through the brightest. Their relationship isn’t anything new, but it’s still well done and they have their heartwarming and funny moments. Of the other characters, I really liked the human boy Nate as he was a very realistic young boy. And those wolves were very funny with their formations into different vehicles producing some of the funniest bits here. The scene with the penguins is another highlight as it was so inventive in its execution and just hilarious.
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Storks definitely has its amusing and very funny moments, but overall the humor isn’t the greatest. As I said, it is too modern and the filmmakers had the impression that if the characters spoke louder and faster, it would be funny to watch. I guess it is funny for kids, but for me as an adult, most of the humor here was typical and over-the-top.
The animation is definitely good, it isn’t great as it never has anything unique, not to mention artistic in it whatsoever. But I liked its more casual, cartoony look with the character designs being quite solid and the overall animation being fluid and polished. The film looked good and was pleasant to watch.
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The voice acting is solid, albeit again too modern in tone. The direction is fine, but nothing too remarkable which is weird having in mind that it comes from the very good director of ‘Neighbors’. And of course the pacing is awful and ridiculously fast paced and thus seriously reducing the movie’s quality. I agree with the critics that the action is overly abundant and that the plot is awfully convoluted with too many subplots. If it had just one arc and a simpler execution with less action, it would have been infinitely better. The ending is heartwarming, but overall the film wasn’t as emotional as the script demanded it to be. I also found the beginning lackluster and most of the scenes in the third act were too frenetic. I’ve had fun watching this movie, but there is nothing more to it other than the entertainment factor.
Storks is solidly animated, sometimes heartwarming with solid characters and a couple of really funny scenes, but the overall humor isn’t the greatest, the film is too convoluted and should have been more simplistic in plot, the tone to it is too modern and the pacing is awfully frenetic and it’s filled with way too many action sequences. It is fun, but it could have been much better had it been better approached.
