Richard - Missione Africa

When his family makes their annual migration, a young sparrow has to travel alongside them. To do this he will have to count on an owl with her imaginary friend, and a parakeet who is a fan of disco music. Along the way he will encounter everything from evil bats to a jumbo jet.

The film is a very beautiful work; the film gives the viewer messages of perseverance, effort and courage.

The characters are very lovable, friendly and well thought out. Highly recommended for the whole family, plus you will want to see it again and again, although it does not comes to surpass the Disney and Dreamworks classics.

"Richard The Stroke" was a really fun family movie to watch. I must confess I had never heard anything about it before today and I thought it was a Dreamworks or Pixar movie that was kept at a low profile. It's an European movie (German/Belgian) and I admit me and my kids had our doubts about it but as the movie progresses our doubts became completely unfounded because "Richard The Stork" was really, really entertaining. It has a slight darker edge than typical Dreamworks or Pixar fare and the story is a bit in the lines of "Finding Nemo", so if you enjoyed that one you will definitely enjoy this one too.

Richard is an orphan sparrow who is found by Aurora, a lovely stork who becomes his stepmother. The pigeon grows believing his just a "short" stork, but his stepdad, Claudius, is reluctant in having him as his stepson, arguing that sparrows don't migrate and when the time comes to do so it will ultimately kill little Richard. When fall sets in, Aurora, Claudius and Max (Richard's stork brother) leave the small pigeon behind and fly off to Africa, although Aurora and Max are reluctant but ultimately obey Claudius orders. Upon waking up, Richard is all alone in the stork nest and the rest of the movie is his story in going out to look for his stork family.

"Richard The Stork" has a lot of funny and heartfelt moments and this European kids movie does try to emulate to some extent the storytelling style of Dreamworks or Pixar movies but adds its own along the way. Grown ups and kids will surely love it, my family enjoyed it wholeheartedly!

An excellent story of unexpected friendships, the true meaning of family, and fellowship overcoming differences. Compassion, humor, and determination highlight this wonderful family movie.

Sparrow "Richard" has been brought up by a family of storks firmly believing that he is one of them, just a bit different. When his family plan to migrate, though, they don't intend on taking him with them and so the poor wee critter awakens one morning to find mum, dad and brother "Max" have set off and left him behind. Desolate, he sets off after them towards Africa. It's going to be a tough challenge on his own, but luckily he has his scatty friend "Olga/Oleg" - an owl with a pretend friend, and the self-adoring parakeet "Kiki" who thinks he's really Donna Summer. Their journey is riddled with dangers but also with opportunities to meet new friends and do some self-discovering along the way. Can he catch up with his family though? Well no, this isn't really very original nor is there an whole heap of jeopardy as the film progresses, but there are still some fun characters and the disco-bird has a few good lines as it builds to a denouement with a fearsome honey badger. It's a story about not judging a book by it's cover and though a bit long and maybe just a bit prone to some (negative) male stereotypes, it's still quite an enjoyable animation that moves along fine.

Although there are segments of animation that look pretty good, like land and water, it's clear they were not from the same animation house that did the storks. The overall animation is of the level of 20-25 years ago with limited use of camera techniques used in CGI films in the last few years. With most of the characters blend with the surroundings.

The story is sadly overdone and completely underwhelming. The sparrow that thinks he's a stork and a stork flock that doesn't share nearly enough screne time to believe or have emotional buy-in to the conflict that is supposed to be there.

Poor writing on top of that. Conscious animals don't know what a train is but are aware of puns, city names, and more.

That said, if you imagination only needs to be at a 6-year-old level, go for it.