Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Storks Blu-ray Movie Review

Mommy, Where Did I Come From?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben January 17, 2017

The animated feature Storks rests on the curious notion that for millennia human offspring were the product of a massive avian manufacturing operation—until a corporate reorganization shut down the baby factory and the human race miraculously discovered sexual intercourse. (Either that, or people were doing it for centuries without the inconvenient consequence of pregnancy.) Even if one can swallow the bizarre premise, Storks doesn't so much strain the suspension of disbelief as discard it altogether. Writer and co-director Nicholas Stoller (Get Him to the Greek), making a transition from live-action comedy into animation, says in the disc commentary that he was inspired by the classic Looney Tunes of yesteryear, but Storks is such a frenzied mess of randomly assembled gags that Chuck Jones should be spinning in his grave.

Storks is the second full-length feature from the reconstituted Warner Animation Group that previously scored a surprise hit with The LEGO Movie. WAG's sophomore outing wasn't nearly as successful, and it's not hard to see why.

Eighteen years ago, the inhabitants of Stork Mountain abandoned their traditional pursuit of making and delivering babies in favor of a commercial courier service called Cornerstore.com. Now Hunter (Kelsey Grammar), the CEO who masterminded the reorganization, plans to move "upstairs" (wherever that is), but first he has a longstanding embarrassment to clean up. The very last baby manufactured by the storks was never delivered, because her designated carrier, Jasper (Danny Trejo), lost the address (there's more to it, but you get the idea). Now known as Tulip (Katie Crown), the girl has somehow grown up into a normal teenager, despite being deprived of all human contact, but she's disruptive to the business. Hunter's solution is to dangle the prospect of advancement in front of an ambitious young stork named Junior (Andy Samberg)—but only if Junior can somehow remove Tulip from Cornerstore to somewhere else. Exactly where and how Junior is supposed to remove the young lady is left sinisterly vague. His solution is to confine Tulip to the now-abandoned baby factory, where she gets so bored that she eventually fires up the antique machinery and (horror of horrors!) makes a baby. Now Junior has a second mess to clean up, if he ever hopes to get promoted.

The accidental baby, whom Junior and Tulip christen "Diamond Destiny", is the result of a concerted campaign by Nate Gardner (Anton Starkman) to get a little brother to play with him, because his parents, Henry and Sarah (Ty Burrell and Jennifer Aniston), are too busy with their real estate business. After the Gardners brush off Nate's request for a sibling with the familiar stammering of parents who are embarrassed when their kids broach uncomfortable biological subjects, Nate finds an old flyer with the address of Stork Mountain and "orders" a brother (which, apparently, is how procreation used to be done). It's Nate's letter that Tulip feeds into the ancient machinery, thereby producing Diamond Destiny.

Storks alternates between increasingly tangential scenes of Junior's and Tulip's odyssey to deliver the unplanned bundle of joy—they're like Hope and Crosby in a bad Road movie—with the more familiar domestic drama of Nate's efforts to gain his parents' attention as he anticipates the baby's arrival. Stoller and his creative team pile on sight gags, wordplay and cultural references, but they seem to be free-associating their way from scene to scene rather than telling a coherent story. Effective fantasy tales ask the audience to accept a basic imaginary premise—e.g., toys comes alive when people aren't looking; bugs or fish have human intelligence, speech and social relations—but then the plot develops logically from that fairy-tale foundation. Storks is based on nothing more than a euphemism for sexual reproduction, and it can't even keep that straight. The result is a loose-limbed sketch comedy that might have worked as a short film, but at feature length it's both tiresome and, at times, downright creepy.

Some of the sketches are amusing in their Python-esque randomness. Junior's office nemesis is an awkward suck-up with the appropriate name of Pigeon Toady (Stephen Kramer Glickman), whose underhanded attempts to advance at Cornerstone make him the film's chief villain. A ferocious wolf pack that Junior and Tulip encounter after they leave Stork Mountain has two bickering leaders, Alpha and Beta (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele), whose carnivorous designs on Diamond Destiny melt in the face of the baby's gurgles and giggles. The pack also turns out to have acrobatic and architectural skills that exceed anything in the human world, alternately bending their bodies to form a suspension bridge, a submarine and an aircraft in their pursuit of the fleeing trio. Junior and Tulip eventually encounter a squadron of penguins, whose dyspeptic nastiness is unlike anything seen in the famous documentary narrated by Morgan Freeman.

The disc's deleted scenes contain the film's original opening, which tried to make better sense of the birds' business history, but it merely serves to emphasize the incoherence of Storks' central premise. Having survived all these centuries as a charitable enterprise based on magically powered equipment, why did Hunter and his fellow storks suddenly become obsessed with generating a profit? Since they live in a sequestered realm rigorously separated from the human world, what exactly can they do with Cornerstore.com's earnings? Maybe they should donate some of the revenue for the extensive therapy Tulip is going to need after the triumphant finale, when she is foisted on the family she has never known following eighteen years of feathered captivity. For all the cartoon cutups, Tulip's story is the very opposite of a comic romp. It's more like Room, with a better view.

Storks Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Like most digital animation, Storks shines in hi-def, and Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features a rainbow of bright, beautifully saturated colors that accentuate and enliven the film's many fantastical vistas. The latter are rendered with impressive clarity, although none of the film's detailed long shots can hope to match the razor-sharp clarity of the character closeups. Blacks are deep and solid, whites are both brilliant and subtly shaded, and the distinctive red of Tulip's hair (it's a plot point) is a color all its own. Banding, aliasing and other artifacts are wholly absent. Warner has given Storks a capable encode with an adequate average bitrate of 24.59 Mbps. (When, oh when, will Warner's theatrical group learn to take advantage of a BD-50's full capacity? In this case, over 20 GB have been left blank.)

Storks Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Storks makes its delivery with an aggressive 7.1 sound mix, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, that takes full advantage of animation's freedom from realism. The magical machinery of Cornerstone.com's operation, the aerial hijinks of Tulip's hovercraft, and the crush of attendees at the annual event known as Stork Con are all accompanied by a riotous cacophony of sounds that appropriately match the busy images on screen. The vocal performances are properly localized and appropriately prioritized. The light-hearted score is by Jeff Danna and Mychael Danna (Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk ), and the soundtrack benefits from pop tunes both new ("Kiss the Sky" performed by Jason Derulo) and old (Talking Heads' "And She Was").

Storks Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary by Writer/Co-Director Nicholas Stoller, Co-Director Doug Sweetland, Editor John Venzon and Story Editor Matt Flynn: The four collaborators discuss such topics as character development, working with the voice actors and ideas that were tried and abandoned. Notably missing is any effort to discuss the story or the film's fragmented "mythology". The commentary has been curiously edited so that there are recurrent gaps, but none of them lasts more than a minute or two.



• Storks: Guide to Your New Baby (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:08): A short sketch featuring Pigeon Toady, with guest appearances by Tulip, Junior, Alpha and Beta.



• The Master: A LEGO Ninjago Short (1080p; 2.35:1; 5:18): This animated short preceded Storks in theaters. It's an extended, self-referential riff on familiar martial arts tropes. The best thing about it (if you leave aside the shattering of the Warner Animation Group logo) is the voice of Jackie Chan as Sensei Wu.



• Storks "Kiss the Sky" Music Video (1080p; 2.35:1; 3:46): Sung by Jason Derulo. In the film, it plays over the sequence following the progress of Nate's letter to Stork Mountain.



• Deleted Scenes (w/Optional Commentary) (1080p; 2.35:1; 10:05): These sequences did not progress beyond rough, line-drawn animation. The scenes are not separately listed or selectable, but a title card precedes each one:
• Bombing Run into Documentary
• Diner Scene
• Wolf Therapy
• I'm a Crane
• Junior Perks
• Vulture Island



• Outtakes (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:14): After Pixar started the idea of a simulated gag reel, everyone had to get into the act.



• Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for The LEGO Batman Movie, Harry Potter on Blu-ray, Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown and the now-familiar Warner promo for UHD.

Storks Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Storks is incoherent, but it's bright, shiny and colorful. The Blu-ray serves up loud effects and plenty of frenetic action for the kids, with just enough inside jokes to keep the adults from falling asleep. If you don't mind the ridiculous "plot", the Blu-ray's quality won't disappoint.