#REVIEW: “STORKS”

Review by Justin Waldman for Mr. Will Wong

Despite coming into this with few expectations, I for one think Storks is a ton of fun with some great voice work, hitting the mark precisely for its target family audience in time to beat those back-to-school blues.

The Movie starts off with an introduction to storks and what they do, or in this case used to do. They were a baby delivering system until one day something went terribly wrong and a stork fell in love with a baby, Tulip (Katie Crown) and they left the baby delivering business to create cornerstore.com, a company similar to drone deliveries by Amazon. Storks then progresses into Hunter (Kelsey Grammer), the head of cornerstore.com, telling Junior (Andy Samberg) that he can become boss as long as he does one thing, and that one task is to fire Tulip. At first, Junior has no issue in doing so, until he realizes its Tulip’s birthday and then sends her to the mailroom, a harmless position considering Storks haven’t received baby requests in years.

Meanwhile back down to earth, Nate (Anton Starkman) wants his parents (Ty Burrell and Jennifer Aniston) to give him a sibling; they ignore him so he writes to the Storks. This is where everything gets interesting, as Tulip gets the letter and accidentally creates a baby. Junior finds out that Tulip created a baby and goes on a mission with Tulip to deliver the baby and get back in time to get his promotion, however there are more obstacles on the way than ever expected. Can Tulip and Junior deliver the baby and still manage to make it back to Stork Mountain on time?

What makes Storks really fun is the talented voice cast that truly brings another level to the Movie. Kelsey Grammer is fantastic as the egotistical power-hungry boss, but then again when isn’t he? Andy Samberg and Katie Crown are also fantastic together, possessing a great chemistry that keeps us invested. It is the side characters however that truly make the voice acting superb. Some of the notable performances are Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele as Alpha and Beta Wolf, which have a small part of the Movie, as well as Stephen Kramer Glickman who plays Pigeon Toady, arguably one of the funniest characters in the entire Movie.

Storks soars high in fun. Warner Bros. Pictures Canada release STORKS on Friday, September 23, 2016.