Review: 'Storks' Delivers Daffy Digressions

The Box Office:
Storks arrives in theaters this Friday, or rather Thursday night starting at 6:00 pm. The animated comedy comes from Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc., and it’s notable in that it’s the first big animated play since hitting it huge with The LEGO Movie in February of 2014.
I wrote at the time that The LEGO Movie could give WB something of a foothold in the world of big studio animation, something it has lacked for as long as I’ve been alive. The LEGO franchise is as good as gold, with The LEGO Batman Movie on tap for next February and Ninjago debuting a year from now (Storks opens with a rather amusing Ninjago short film).
But is Warner Bros. more than just LEGO Movie offerings when it comes to animation? Storks is a shot at proving that they can do more than just LEGO movies. Can they deliver this weekend? Well, history shows that when a violent action movie squares off against an animated film, both parties triumph. Stay tuned…
© Provided by Forbes Media LLC Warner Bros. The Review:
Storks is a stitched-together, tonally inconsistent, and often befuddled animated caper that works almost in spite of itself. It follows the “two frenemies end up on a trip there and back again” template that now seems to dominate big-studio animation, and it tells two stories at the same time. But the laughs do eventually come, and the side story is surprisingly compelling in an unassuming way, with a finale that tugs at absolutely unearned heartstrings but will nonetheless send the audience out of the theater in a good mood.
The film posits that babies were once delivered by storks after all, but no longer. After an accident involving an over-attached stork and a newborn that left a human baby with no delivery address, the storks now merely deliver packages instead. The lost human baby, named Tulip, grew up in the stork’s company headquarters, much to the chagrin of the big boss (Kelsey Grammer). But Tulip (Katie Crown) is now eighteen, so the klutzy and trouble-making young charge can be legally tossed out. Said grim duty falls to Junior (Andy Samberg), one of the top delivery storks and due for a promotion.
But complications and misunderstandings lead to a new baby being created. So now it’s up to Junior and Tulip to secretly deliver the newborn to a family that has no idea that a baby is actually on the way. Needless to say, comic hijinks and life lessons ensue. The picture periodically jumps to a look at the parents (Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burell, and Anton Starkman) whose only son (Anton Starkman) sent an “I want a baby brother” letter to the storks in the first place. While the shift is jarring, the subplot (about overworked parents who play along with their son’s apparent delusions to bond with him) works because it doesn’t push too hard.
The main plot takes a moment or two to kick into gear, but the film is at its best when it just concentrates on madcap Looney Tunes-ish anarchy. There is a mid-film set-piece involving wolves (lead by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) that is a genuine laugh riot. And there is also a gut-busting third act action sequence involving malicious penguins, whereby heroes and villains alike duke it out in near silence so as to not wake a sleeping baby. Jackie Chan would be proud, even if the scene highlights just how loud and frantic the rest of the movie is. Warner Bros. could do worse than fashion short films based around those wolves and those penguins.
All of this leads to a big-scale action finale as well as a “go for the heartstrings” finish that works in the same way that the final Secret Life of Pets montage worked, namely that it plays into a (somewhat) universal connection. Stork, co-directed by Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland, is a little too frantic and a bit too disconnected, but it works almost despite itself. The “B” plot works without villainizing either working parent, while the core relationship between Junior and Tulip doesn’t force itself into a particular box.
Katie Crown is superb, and it’s wonderful to see a voice-over vet (as opposed to a movie star) in a leading role in a major animated film. Storks works best when it either goes for straight drama or embraces the Chuck Jones spirit but falters when it tries to cram itself into the conventional “This is how animated films work in 2016″ box. All things considered, my kids laughed at the right spots, and I enjoyed the digressions (the wolf pack, the human-based subplot, etc.) enough to overlook the somewhat disjointed main plot. I’m still not sure what a Warner Bros. animated film “is” in 2016, but Storks is good enough to make me want to continue to find out.

Source :- www.msn.com