Tulip was left undelivered when Cornerstone ( a delivery service run by storks) cancelled the baby delivery side of its business. She now works for Cornerstone but Junior, delegated to fire her, cannot bring himself to do so. The two of them embark on delivering a new baby to an eagerly awaiting family while sneaky *rse-lickerToady seeks to scupper them in order to curry favour with heartless boss Hunter.This CGI feature gives us two loveable protagonists: Junior, would-be heartless boss but with a heart, and Tulip, well-meaning but klutzy, and a little lost soul. We also have two villains: big boss Hunter (beautifully voiced by Kelsey Grammer) and odious, treacherous sycophant Toady, a desperately unfunny "humorous" character with the worst vocal characterisation since Steve Martin in Looney Tunes: Back In Action.My concern about this movie is that it is not very friendly towards kids who are, presumably, its main target. The story, while not over-complex, is fairly dense and may lose younger viewers, and much of the dialogue is rapid-fire with references which are aimed at adults more than youngsters.Having said that, there is a lot of humour, especially visual slapstick humour, and the emotional payoffs - and there are a fair number of them - are broadly presented so that all ages should be able to register them.With the exception of Toady, character design is good, set/location design is excellent (albeit the baby-making machinery, while dazzling, is extremely busy - just because you can use CGI to achieve complexity doesn't always mean that you should: less can often be more effective than more).The babies, of which there are literally thousands, and especially the featured baby, are unbearably cute, and thankfully avoid "so sweet they may make you puke" status.I did like this - I preferred it to the recent Trolls by a small margin - but I think older kids will enjoy it more than younger ones.

In 2016, Nicholas Stoller (Get Him to the Greek & Neighbors) and Doug Sweetland (Presto) presented Storks, an animated film from Warner Bros. Animation Group (The Lego Movie). While it had a mixed critical reception, it's definitely a movie that typical movie-goers and families may find adorable and funny?The main plot centers on a stork company that delivers packages and babies. When the top delivery stork, Junior, becomes boss of the workers, he is told to fire the only human working there, Orphan Tulip. Instead of firing her, he sends her to the defunct mail room. Meanwhile, the son of two workaholic parents, Nate Gardner, sends a letter to the company asking for a baby sibling to play with. When the letter arrives, it creates a baby, so now Junior and Tulip have to deliver the baby to it's guardians while going through many obstacles like avoiding getting noticed by the company's CEO Hunter, a pack of hysterical wolves, and trying to care for the baby itself. In concept, the film has all the right ideas to make a charming comedy for the whole family, and it mostly succeeds in it's execution. Even though the journey Junior and Tulip go on feels similar to almost every Pixar film (e.g. Inside Out and Finding Nemo), the film gives the characters enough time to develop off each other, where they came from, and what each other's goals are, even if their quirky eccentric personalities don't always contrast that well. The subplot featuring Nate and his family, however, does come off as rather straightforward and it's easy to guess what will happen since all his goal is to have a baby sibling. It doesn't help that the movie itself does come with some tired film clichés, not just the duo who overcome each other on their obstacles, but also the workaholic parents who try to make their son happy, the big promotion from one job to another, the side villain finding out where the heroes are, and even how the main villain tries to get rid of the protagonists.As for the rest of the characters, the CEO of the company Hunter at first comes off as a trustworthy boss, but there's quite a nerve he has with babies which presents him as threatening and cunning. The pigeon Toady can either be amusing or annoying with his exaggerated "bro" voice, but he's also a decent deuteragonist as he only follows his orders to make the most of his job. As stated before, the Gardner family have the same trope of the little kid who wants his busy parents to spend more time with him, so they decide to bond with him more to make him happy. And then there are the wolves led by the alpha and beta, who deliver the absolute funniest parts of the movie due to their personalities constantly shifting from menacing to energetically adoring the baby, as well as performing the best visual gags in the film.However, if there are two things this movie really nailed in the execution, it would be the heart and the humor. The filmmakers definitely knew when to have cute sentimental moments with the baby, and they always come off as adorable instead of schmaltzy. Also, when the movie's main characters have their moments of relief and sentimentality, it gives the film a lighthearted tone that never comes out randomly, and portrays the scene with just the right emotion to make the audience feel for them. However, the humor would have to be the highlight of the movie, as there's plenty of one liners, visual gags, surprisingly decent pop culture jokes, slapstick, subversion and line deliveries, and it's very rare when they miss their mark as they have such exquisite timing and charm to them. Also, since Junior and Tulip do spend the journey caring for the baby, they spend time feeding and trying to put the baby to sleep, which also makes the movie relatable to any parents who raised their own offspring. Since the movie acts more on the cartoony side, it creates the animation to be as cartoony as it can, and it did the job beautifully. The characters look kinda simplistic, but given the silly nature of the film, they contrast well, and their movements can get exaggerated and wacky at just the right moments. Although some of the places they leads go to range from a cave, to the Arctic, to suburbs, the animators still give the backgrounds life and present them in colorful, unique, vibrant, and bright manners. The effects animation is also quite creative such as the factory robots, the water, the machine that creates babies, and even some of the lights and electrical effects. The only criticism there is to give the animation is that many of the storks look like the exact same model (probably by means of cheaping out a bit), but they don't ruin the sporadically wonderful quality that the visuals have to offer.While Storks may not have flown as high up as other animated films of 2016 such as Kung Fu Panda 3, Zootopia and Kubo & the Two Strings, it did offer enough good laughs, silly concepts, well crafted animation and memorable characters to stand on it's own. If you're in the mood for a cute little family comedy with some relatability to those who have raised babies before, then this will be a delight from beginning to end, especially since it knows who to aim itself towards. If Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland can do this good of a job with cartoony movies, then I can't wait to see what they have in store next for animation….like Captain Underpants, nice job Nick.

Storks seemed like a good kids movie you would watch just to get out of the house and go to the theater, but I found that storks is very boring and fast paced. Many of the jokes fell flat and felt forced, speaking of forced, the parents. The parents are absolutely terrible characters and suddenly go from being responsible to downright stupid and unrealistic. Many of the scenes are rushed and the characters actions and dialogue left me confused. Over all, storks is a waste of time movie to watch once and never again.

Highly recommended. The movie constantly makes fun of both itself, and family-raising tropes and injects the importance of communication in digestible doses.Although I don't have any spoilers in here, I do mention a couple of specific scenes. This won't ruin your experience of the movie, I promise.This is a great entry into the 'animated family friendly / oriented' genre. The beginning was a little slow to be sure, possibly uninteresting, even.... but 10 minutes in and I'm hooked. It had great chemistry, and the mom-dad type interactions between some of the character pairs were clearly inspired by parents who have been there, recently enough to remember the humour and challenges of early child-raising. That's clear, even to someone who's never had children of their own.Emotionally, it tugs at a few strings, but not to the point of needing tissues; it's light and humorous, tackling the importance of family bonding in a positive way.Warning; If you have young ones going to see this, I think that you should likely make sure they know where babies come from, as this film raises this question in a provocative way, and young inquisitive minds..... well. Let's just say it's a question that begs an answer.Also, the wolves. oh and the penguins. Both are hilarious and cleverly done, and the movie using silence in a creative and funny way to make light of how every-other-film-ever uses mood music to artificially amp up action scenes.Genius.