'Storks' - Movie Review

"Storks" is, theoretically, an animated movie for kids. And it's loud and colourful enough that they might actually enjoy it, but even kids understand (if only on an unconscious level) the concept of character consistency - too frequently sacrificed here for the joke of the moment. And I suspect they might also want likeable characters - a thing this movie is sorely lacking.

Our protagonists are the stork Junior (Andy Samberg) and the orphan human Tulip (Katie Crown). Storks used to deliver babies, but the undelivered Tulip led to a crisis and the storks switched from babies to an Amazon-alike store system. Tulip is a hazard, energetic and always inventing things, so the boss sends Junior to get her to stop causing trouble and/or fire her. Instead, she re-activates the baby-making machine, so our orphan and a temporarily flightless stork have to make a delivery half way across the world. Which I suppose makes this a "buddy" movie.

The problem is ... neither of the primary characters are appealing, and the majority of the secondary characters are just props for jokes. And the jokes ... most of them are juvenile delinquent humour for adults, if you know what I mean. Too stupid for adults and yet not well targeted for kids.

While I watch a fair number of animated kids movies, I guess I'm also fairly selective: this is the worst animated movie I've seen in five or more years.