Storks doesn’t really make any sense, but it knows it. The premise is built on the idea that these Storks, once couriers exclusively delivering babies to expectant families, are now instead delivering various sundries for a giant shopping website. It turns out that there are other ways for families to get babies. In the midst of this, stork Junior (Andy Samberg) is in line for a promotion at the company, but is first tasked with firing the orphan Tulip (Katie Crown), a human who because of various circumstances was not delivered to her parents eighteen years ago.
But instead of firing Tulip, Junior sends to the defunct letter room of the facility. And this all leads to her accidentally creating a new baby to be delivered. Fearing retribution from his boss, Junior teams up with Tulip to secretly deliver this baby. Describing the plot actually feels a iittle futile, because the film itself seems to merely treat its premise as a platform for delivering absurd comedic bits at a rapid fire pace. The film occasionally makes vague motions towards some emotional content, but it clearly doesn’t really care about all that. It would rather aggressively nonsensical.
It’s really best not to think about it at all. This whole premise falls apart under any sort of scrutiny. The film eventually builds to the idea that the true purpose of the storks is to deliver babies, and that they should get back into that. But the film makes clear that the world seems to be doing okay even without their services. Early on, the film establishes that there are other ways to get babies, and the whole stork service thing doesn’t really feel like a superior of going about reproduction. But again, this film acknowledges at all points that none of this makes any sense.
It just throws one nonsense bit out after another. This is a film that mostly just wants to be funny. It keeps taking things to completely strange and inane levels. There is, for example, a pack of wolves chasing the heroes down. The means with which they do it get increasingly elaborate and dumb, as the wolves somehow manage to transform themselves into various other things in their pursuit of the protagonists. And there is a fight late in the film that is about as funny as anything I’ve seen in cinemas all year.
It’s kind of charming by the end, but also kind of exhausting. The film keeps up the pace, and allows itself to just keep getting more and more inane. It’s a double-edged sword at best; one’s tolerance of all this nuttiness is completely dependent on how one is feeling that day. But it’s a professional production through and through, the animation looking crisp, and the voice work doing a good job of selling those punch lines. Andy Samberg’s inherently goofy delivery is pretty much perfect for the lead voice.
Storks, when all is said and done, is probably disposable. But it’s also pretty funny. It has a distinct comedic voice that is missing from many of these mass-market animated films, which all clearly want to be funny, but only to the extent that children’s films are supposed to be funny. Storks kind of veers away from established formula, even while working within the rigid structures of the family film. It commits more fully to just being an absurd piece of work. There is some semblance of emotionality in this film, but it never really takes center stage. This doesn’t allow the film to reach the highest peaks of this genre of cinema, but it’s kind of memorable in its own way.
My Rating:
