Storks review

2016’s 12th animated film.

http://putlocker.live/Storks-online-free-putlocker-177-216.html

My opinion right after watching film

My opinion right after watching the film is that there’s a pleasant feeling to the film, and that it is better than the last few films I have seen this year for animation (not including my Pixar canon writeups in this). Despite this, the film does not offer much else, since all of the potential is ruined by how obnoxious the film is in general. You will just remember the overall pleasant-ness about the film.

Production

The only information about the production of the film is that it was announced in 2013, and probably in production since 2012. Warner Animations have a “think tank”, where directors and writers announce and pitch films, which caused this film to be picked up.

Story

The story starts with with a narration about storks being a way for babies to be born, which has been the case since the beginning of time. Now the storks deliver for a company called cornerstones.com, and……… I already have some weird questions regarding this. Do humans own this? Can the humans understand these animals if they are the ones who run this business? Cornerstone’s top stork named Junior (Andy Samberg) meeting with his boss Hunter (Kelsey Grammer) promoting Junior to the boss of the company, while himself is being promoted to a chairman. Apparently they stopped delivering babies outright because of an orphan named Tulip (Katie Crown) who a stork named Jasper (Danny Trejo) wanted to keep, and with the address signal being broke, they had to keep her. Since she is 18 now, Hunter wants Junior to fire her, so she can return to the human world, and this is the only way Junior can be the boss of the company.

After creating a device that causes most of the animals that cannot fly the ability to fly (a rocket), it ends up blowing up. For some reason, I guess it involves her enthusiasm, he cannot fire her, and tells her that she cannot leave the room, because he misleads her about being a mailroom clerk. She finds ways to entertain herself, and she is likable, but the voice and the actions just give me Izzy flashbacks from Total Drama.

We meet three people named Henry (Ty Burrell), Sarah (Jennifer Aniston), and their son named Nate Gardner (Anton Starkman). The toe parents are workaholics, who ignore their son for work….. 24/7. He asks them if they can have another child for him, and they refuse, and also refuse to tell him where babies come from. He sees a Storks pamphlet, and decides to send a letter without his parent’s permission. How much the parents work are obnoxious, and the child is selfish, and wreckless enough to clearly not understand the importance of another child, and how it is NOT his responsibility to make a decision like that for his parents.

The letter manages to get into Tulip’s hand, and she uses this as an excuse to do an exciting task. Junior sees he though the camera monitors, and tries to get Hunter to not see it. She manages to deliver the letter to the baby-making room, instead of the letter room, which….. they decided to not destroy it after 18 years, so it was kind of stupid. I will say that this film would not be as bad if it was not so obnoxious. It is too late, since the baby is made.

For some odd reason, the child who ordered the baby somehow knows that it is on it’s way. In order to keep his job and his promotion, of course Junior is going to help Tulip deliver the baby to the family’s house. But the thing is……. one of his wings broke. We get back to the Gardener family, and oh my goodness are these two horrible parents. I get needing to work more than you would like, but neither one of them WANT to speak to their kid, and the father makes a snide remark about his own son having an imagination, before he quickly runs away. A pigeon named Toady (Stephen Kramer Glickman) realizes that the baby exists, and it of course going to stop it.

The plane crashes, and Junior lashes out at her for everything being her fault, and that there is a reason why she doesn’t fit in. He is kind of douchey, and it is played for laughs, but he isn’t funny, and only comes off as a bit more of a douche. If he fired her like he was supposed to, none of this would have happened.

I really do not like most of these characters. All of them are used as some sort of comic relief, and they only come off as douches. The two of them get captured by wolves named Alpha (Keegan Michael-Key) and Beta (Jordan Peele), but their infatuation with the baby causes them all to escape. Despite this, the wolves still go after them for the baby.

The parents finally decide to finally spend time with their son after he throws out some weird, blackmailing dialogue, and they expect the baby to not show up, which they will tell their son afterwards. It is night, and the two start to somewhat bond. He only wants to be a boss because it sounds cool, without planning what to do when he becomes one, but when he asks her a question, she is ill prepared. Tulip tells him that since they are having this weird moment, she admits that the plane was going to be for when she finds her parents. Of course, there is a giggle-worthy scene of them staying up to get the baby to fall asleep.

What neither of them know about is the peacock reporting what he knows to Hunter, and the two decide to tamper with the destination to get them caught. The wolves manage to get to them while in a glass factory, but there is glass everywhere,which is a stork’s worst enemy. Jasper appears, and he realizes that Tulip is the baby, he tells her that he fell in love with her, and feels guilty about screwing up her chances of having a family. He has all of the beacon pieces but one (which she has), and when they put them together, she finally realizes that she is going to meet her real family.

Tulip tells Junior that they will deliver the baby before going to her “real” family, which somewhat hurts him, but he is oddly dismissive of her helping him, and pressuring her to go to her family. He tells her that he was supposed to fire her, which saddens her, but he tells her that there’s nothing for her at the factory.

While Junior delivers the baby to a gentrified house, the Gardners receive a cease and desist regarding the mechanism they built for the new baby, as it is not safe. They tell the child something he was already told, and now he is saddened about it. Tulip decides to not go to her family, and go deliver the baby, only to see Junior tied up, with the baby being given to the penguins. They take the baby to the baby making machine, with thousands of babies being made. Hunter and Toady try to get the machine to stop, and it falls, but he tries to reattach it to the ground, but it breaks with Tulip and Junior falling as well. His wing conveniently was not broken but  dislocated, so he is able to fly them both to safety. All of the countless babies that were made were delivered, the storks love delivering babies, and Tulip reunites with her family, but doesn’t isolate the storks who have become her family as well.

I know I threw a little bit of salt on the film, but it is not a bad film. It is not a brilliant film, and I do think that the jokes are hit and miss, as well as the obnoxiousness of …. everything to be a bit too much. What I will say is that the voice acting is the best I have heard in YEARS, and that is no exaggeration. There is a lot of heart in this film, and the story and characters are decent. Overall, it is an average film that makes you feel pleasant at the end of the film. It was nice that actual voice actors dominated the film, since you actually needed to have VOICE TALENT to have a part in an animated film in the past, before the celebrity marketing took over the industry. It is weird that the political and cultural aspect of having babies, and reproduction is completely ignored.

Characters

While the story is pretty decent, the characters annoyed me at various points in the film. They aren’t extremely unlikable, but the obnoxiousness factor irritated me, though I will say that the voice acting saved them for me, since there’s so much passion in it.

Junior is about to be the boss, and is kind of pessimistic about everything. He wasn’t very interesting, and I felt like his development was kind of rushed.

You do feel bad for her position, and she is an eccentric and likable character. Maybe I am biased because I LOVE her voice actress, but that might have been the problem. I kept on comparing her to other characters that were better. They never touched on the psychological factors of her being raised by storks, which is disappointing.

He is Kelsey Grammer personified. Kind of funny, but a douchebag as well.

I do feel bad for his situation, and it was nice to see him bond with his parents, but the dialogue to get them to do it was more than awkward to say the least. Nothing else to say.

These two were so unlikable to me. I have never seen two parents who were so intentionally negligent. Their development was rushed, and I mentioned the weird dialogue to get to that point.

Screw him. He irritates my soul, and has no purpose.

Animation

Warner Brothers tens to focus on a lot of boxy designs, and it works for this film. It is a very colorful animation, the designs are pretty pleasing, and while the backgrounds are not the most detailed, it is still nice to look at. Even though I got a crappy copy of the film, it is clear that the animation was very fluid, and well-done.

Music

There really is not much to say about the music in the film. It’s fine,…… you will not remember much about it, but it does the job well, and it was not misplaced. The music will be the aspect you remember the least about the film.

Reception at Release

When the film was released on September 23rd, 2016, it made $74.2 million domestically, and $100.3 million in other territories, with a worldwide total of $175.5 million. I think this film might gross up to $200 million, or it will just miss the mark. It has been out for 2 months now, and with Trolls and Moana out, its time to make a large amount of money in a short period of time is gone.

Critically, people claimed that it was bright, colorful, and has some charm to it, but the story was a bit too simplistic and predictable. Many people saw it as a disappointing follow up to The Lego Movie.

Final Score

Story: 6.5/10

Characters: 5.5/10

Animation: 8/10

Music: 7/10

= 27/40 = 68%

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