Storks is a fun, colorful, and imaginative exploration of the mystery of where babies come from and the complicated corporate infrastructure behind that answer. Parents don’t have to worry, this movie won’t require any delicate conversations on the ride home. The bees are kept a respectable distance apart from the birds. The most touchy issue that gets brought up is the harsh reality of how difficult kids are to get to sleep.
Storks is full of clever humor that is perfect for all ages to enjoy. If you are a fan movies like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Toy Story, and The Muppets you’ll love seeing what the talents that brought those to screen can do when they come together. Storks is Directed by Academy Award Nominee Doug Sweetland and Nicholas Stoller, who also wrote the script.
Junior, whose voiced by Andy Samberg, is an ambitious stork whose on a path to the top of the corporate ladder at the global logistics and distribution behemoth Cornerstore.com. Tulip, voiced by Katie Crown, is a company owned orphan who lost her shipping label. She doesn’t fit in the cogs of the well oiled machinery of Cornerstore.com. Her outside-the-box approach throws a wrench into well, pretty much anything she lays hands on.
When there is an unexpected hiccup when a tiny bundle of joy tumbles off the shipping line instead of a cell phone, Junior has to find a way to cover it up and make the delivery on his own or risk losing his dream job and the approval of Hunter his stern, square jawed boss voiced by Kelsey Grammer. The only problem is he has help from Tulip.
The movie is about belonging, acceptance, and balancing priorities between work and family. Workaholics might find some scenes hit close to home. More and more often people are faced with the difficult decision of deferring their dreams of having children to be able to feel like they able to be be in a position to achieve success and move ahead in their careers. Storks looks at why people choose to make those sacrifices and the effects that choice has on them and the people in their life.
The movie brings up important questions like: How much is too much to ask? Is success worth taking calls over the holidays and missing watching your kids grow up? Does a promotion provide the validation you never got from a father you never had? There is a delicate art to establishing boundaries between familial negligence and manipulation and guilting.
Storks isn’t all about making you feel bad about a missed league game though, it’s a whimsical adventure that takes you along for the ride by air, sea, and sky. The scenes with the Wolf Pack our unlikely heroes meet along the way, which is voiced by Keegan-Michael and Key Jordan Peele, are some of the most delightful in the movie. The chase sequence involving Lupine nano-bot pack powers is inventive and wonderfully absurd and detailed. The gags throughout the film get big laughs and pay off nicely time and time again.
At the core of the movie is an inclusive and hopeful message. No matter how odd you think you are there is a place out there where who you are makes sense and you are the perfect match for. Everyone deserves to be part of a family, in whatever form they find it, that appreciates and cares about them.
A family made up of a goofy orphan girl, a bird, and a custom order factory-built baby can sometimes be closer than a Mom, a Dad, and a son. Whether through shared trials, genetics, being assimilated into a pack, or being property of a major corporate conglomerate- there’s lots of ways to belong.
Directors: Nicholas Stoller, Doug Sweetland
Writer: Nicholas Stoller
Producers: Nicholas Stoller, Brad Lewis
Executive Producers: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Glenn Ficarra, John Requa, Jared Stern
Cast: Andy Samberg, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Kelsey Grammer, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Katie Crown, Danny Trejo
Rated PG
