Storks

Storks have long had the job of delivering babies. But now they’ve left the strenuous and emotionally taxing baby business for box-store delivery. Partnering with CornerStore.com, storks now specialize in same-day deliveries. They’re cogs in the corporate machine.
    Except for Tulip (voiced by Katie Crown: Clarence), an orphan who hangs around the stork factory trying to help. Her heart is in the right place, but her head isn’t. Most of her inventions end as explosions. Junior (Andy Samberg: Brooklyn Nine-Nine) is assigned to fire her.
    Junior doesn’t have the heart, so he assigns Tulip to the abandoned Baby Orders room, where the higher-ups won’t notice the lonely orphan. The plan works until Tulip finds a letter from the Gardner family, requesting a baby. She dusts off the baby machine and creates an adorable tot to deliver to the Gardners.
    Junior is horrified. If management sees the baby, he and Tulip will get the boot. He resolves on a secret delivery. But office busybody Pigeon Toady (Stephen Kramer Glickman: The Night Time Show with Stephen Kramer Glickman) has discovered the baby and plans to expose Junior and steal his big promotion.
    Can Tulip and Junior work together to get Baby Gardner home? How hard could it be to deliver one baby?
    For this week’s review, four-and-a-half-year-old Grace Kearns assisted The Moviegoer. Grace reports that Storks was funny. She liked Tulip’s curly hair and the silly wolf pack.
    The wolf pack was indeed the best part of the film. Voiced by comedians extraordinaire Key & Peele, the scene-stealing wolves played a goofy version of charades.
    The rest of the film, however, is a bit of a drag for those of us who’ve graduated preschool. Grace watched quietly, while your regular reviewer squirmed and checked her watch. The plot was overly complex, jokes often fell flat and characters seemed inconsistent. Worst of all in a movie written for younger audiences, there were no lessons to be learned or engaging songs.
    A few days later, Grace’s fondest and only memory remained the wolf pack.
    Buying a ticket may earn you a quiet child for 90 minutes, but don’t expect a lasting impression from this shallow, underwritten comedy.

Fair Animation • PG • 87 mins.