Originally published in The Forest Scout:
“Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that kids movies offer the relief we need right now, if not in more than one way. Storks, coming out in September and not quite as deep as Zootopia, is the next film I’m keeping my eye out for, period. Fingers crossed.”
This is a little excerpt from my recent review of Zootopia, back when I saw it last July (a little late relative to its release, but better late than never, of course). I pretty darn near had only good thoughts about it, a smart and surprisingly conscious animated film that had more to say for itself than a “cartoon” could. Someone needed to take a break from the tiring amounts of brutality we’d been having in our action blockbusters (I’ve witnessed my fair share in the news); if it had to be a movie for children — a well-educated and forward-looking one, at that — so be it. Zootopia was easily added to what will surely be my list of faves from 2016, though, as you could probably tell, I wasn’t looking forward to much else in the year.
At least until September. Speaking of which — Storks. There was an eye-catcher in the trailers right there. I wish being different didn’t have to mean so much in this “copy-and-paste” year of movies, but that was the lure for this one, like it was for Zootopia and is for most family movies these days. The simple title stuck, but the film seemed… busy. In a good way. It surely shot for invention, and even if it didn’t end up hitting its mark, it looked like you were going to respect its attempts to do so.
I will say that Storks can be defined by the countless, at times relentless, attempts it executes to constantly engage its audience. Some work. Some don’t. The movie spreads its risks, though. It certainly isn’t as deep as Zootopia. We’d rather it not be, or at least, I don’t. Maybe I can laugh (out loud) more freely than the next guy can at a bombastic (and relatively tame) fight scene in which each of the parties involved, one of them being a pack of henchman-like penguins, must avoid making the slightest noise in order to keep from waking a sleeping baby. No metaphors. Just penguins. The film gets it down; for all the shots it weeds out, the scene doesn’t get caught up in itself and runs for just the right amount of time. Of course, for me, that’s before I can realize what’s going on, but even if it’s the one moment, it accomplishes what you might have feared the film wasn’t going to be capable of: being actually funny.
I’ll say a couple of words for plot’s sake, which, when we’re talking about Storks, must take on a certain order of progression, for both the reader’s understanding and mine (there’s a lot here). Junior (voiced by Andy Samberg) is a stork employed at Cornerstore, a massive new-age mailing company at which all of the workers are birds (wings help with distribution). The business used to deliver babies but has since adjusted production to accommodate for the growing demand of other equally time-consuming goods, such as phones and computers (ah, everyone loves their dose of corporate antagonism). Junior’s looking to get promoted by his superiors to the all-powerful position of “boss.” He does not know what the job entails. We have all been taught to covet the word’s reward, and so has he.
Wrapped around his own boss’s finger, Junior is enlisted to fire the rate-limiting factor and lone human at the branch, Tulip (Katie Crown), only to choke up and help her screw up one more thing: turning on the unauthorized Baby Factory (cute) and producing a little infant off the conveyor belt, entirely against company procedure. Junior knows that if his boss (Kelsey Grammer) finds out, it will cost him his promotion, along with his job. He must deliver the baby, with the rather unwanted help of Tulip, to its parents before his coworkers notice something’s up.
Self-interest sets Junior forth on his journey. Tulip and the baby (soon affectionately named Diamond Destiny) are calling for a paradigm shift, and his motives will eventually become more considerate and directed toward the well-being of his cohorts. Just let the movie do what it does.
It takes a brief moment for Storks to establish a groove; a chaotically narrated introduction gets the film on the wrong foot. It’s too slow and too fast at the same time (it takes the movie about five minutes to deliver the synopsis above, as though we’ve processed it for twice as long). Storks possesses the most control when it doesn’t seem to have any. Everything after those first five minutes is a series of double-takes, with both the build-up and punchline in each package. It’s all mercifully simple-structured for how twitchy the script is. Glass is a bird’s sworn enemy, wolves have an inexplicable symbiotic relationship, and hovercrafts can be assembled and fixed with nothing but a wrench.
Don’t mistake screwball for slapstick; there are gears turning behind most every gag that Storks provides, both of sight and sound. The film’s kid bait, the absent-minded, nasally-voiced Pigeon Toady (Stephen Kramer Glickman), first came across to me as plain irritating. That is his role in this movie: he unknowingly pushes the buttons of both employers and employees. His dreams of finding his niche at Cornerstone are relatable to Junior’s, if anyone will take him in. It’s rather fitting that he acts as the “frenemy” of the show. He’s not meant to play a wild card; he’s meant to be one, to the film’s avail. By the end, I almost admired his off-the-cuff presence. He, like many other things in the film, makes a running joke that works simply because it runs.
Storks was co-directed by Doug Sweetland, animator for such insightful Pixar films as Toy Story and Finding Nemo. His contribution shows; the look of the animation is appealing and put to good use in a side plot following a family with a 10-year-old (Anton Starkman) waiting for the “storks” to deliver his baby sibling.
The other director? Nicholas Stoller of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Neighbors.
I can believe it. Those buddy-movies knew what it took to be likable and humbling. Storks takes care of the former. Not so much the latter, but then again, kids don’t want anything subtle. The Baby Factory doesn’t represent the virtues of family — it’s probably just a factory that makes babies. It’s sweet enough of a service, though, as Storks will probably give the explanation to life’s origins that kids will like and that their parents will not want, or be able, to top.
