Cegonhas: A História que não te Contaram

I admit that while it's not one of my favorite animated movies of the year, it's still definitely something I would recommend. I admit that it does start a bit slow. It really gets better when the character Tulip is introduced. She is the heart of this movie and by far the most entertaining part. Thank you for featuring her so much. Almost everything she says is funny. I guess I just have a soft spot for genki girls. Pinkie Pie is the one who comes to mind most at any time. She even has red (pink?) hair like her. The best parts are probably her interacting with her personas.

I admit that the story makes little sense. How exactly are babies brought into this world now? We briefly get to see the process of how a baby is made. I love how big and epic this movie gets. Yes, it's technically short, but it still gives you everything you would want in a good movie. They have a lot of great details and it leads up to an exciting climax. As a huge fan of "The Lego Movie", you have to watch the great short that precedes this. If only "Looney Tunes" did stuff like that nowadays. It's great to see a good movie based on an original concept too. ***

I entered to watch Storks expecting the worse. However, I got an really enjoyable movie.

The Characters are charismatic and they have good chemistry. In Fact, I LOVED Tulip and The Wolfs were hilarious.

If you want a funny and heart-warming film, then Storks is a great option for you.

It's such a shame to see how uninterested was Warner in marketing this film.

I Trust that in a few years Storks will have the recognition that it deserves, and a big fan base.

This film tells the story of a delivery company run by storks. They stopped delivering babies for many years, until one incompetent employee broke the rules and created a baby for delivery.

There are many reasons to like "Storks". The animation is super cute, and the story is very sweet. Most people would connect with babies, making this film an easy success. The wolves are funny too. However the broken heart has gone just one step too far as it gets too repetitive and non functional like the other formation of the wolves. I also like the literal downfall of the boss. Adults can relate to that too. It is rare to see a film that can be enjoyed by all ages. I liked it.

Storks is undoubtedly funny and keeps up with the audience attention just enough in spite of an at par performance in pretty much all departments. The movie doesn't have any wow factor, except for the "baby cuteness", but I didn't find it bad either.

Story (7/10): I've heard about this concept for the first time, but apparently, storks, in some mythologies, are associated with baby delivery and that's what the story is about. In the modern times, though, they have moved away from baby delivery to cell phones. However, in a dramatic turn of events, one of the soon-to-be-boss storks, Junior, is unable to prevent the restart of a baby-making machine by Tulip - the only human at the facility, which creates a baby. Along with Tulip, he has to not just hide it from the rest of the storks at the facility, but also deliver the baby. And in that process, he has to prevent the babies from external enemies as well. I didn't find the story so exciting but what I liked about it was the screenplay that had good punches - although inexplicable on some occasions. What I also loved the most was some of the innovative stuff with wolves and penguins, which was innovative and great to watch. The characterization of Tulip and establishing her chemistry with Junior was a little tricky but the writer managed to do it pretty much smoothly without making it looked forced. Overall, a pretty neat job by Nicholas Stoller.

Animation (8/10): The animation is really good, especially the ones on creating various baby faces and expressions. It was pretty much like they poured in all of their energy into that. Also, the work around landscaping and making the entire visual very colorful is great.

Direction (7/10): The combination of Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland has pulled out quite well. While the former hasn't had a great run with the movies yet, Doug's experience with the animation movies seems to have come handy, even though it was a first time for him. The idea of getting wolves creating amazing shapes - totally fitting into the context of the story - and the silent fight with the penguins was great. However, the direction could have improved in the beginning of the movie, which was a little slow and low on momentum.

Overall (7/10): A well-made movie with good animation and super score on cuteness factor!

I found STORKS in the way that you're supposed to find underrated/cult classics: by accident. When it was released, I bought into the collective sigh of underwhelm that most critics expressed and that was my mistake. It's easy to understand why the critical community didn't like it: in an era where Pixar, Disney and even Dreamworks keep churning out magnificently multi-layered heart-warmers that set the bar stratospherically high, STORKS doesn't register all that well. We've been spoiled by excellence. As a result, we've lost the ability to enjoy the simple pleasures of pure entertainment.

And that's what STORKS delivers better than babies or packages: entertainment.

You might have noticed people commenting on how forced and thin the storyline is and how uneven it feels, and those complaints are accurate. The plot is extremely thin (virtually an extended sitcom-sized premise stretched into an epic road-trip format), and the story moves so quickly that it goes too far too fast with nary any breathing room to savor the experience or give the characters the tension or time to build any real catharsis or change. But the characters are so authentic to themselves that you know just about everything you need to know about them from their first scenes.

I think the main reason STORKS gets such middling reviews in print and here on IMDb is because it's an old-fashioned type of comedy: a screwball-slapstick hybrid. The emphasis on sight gags, pain-humor, and wackiness has generally been avoided in animated films as passe and vulgar--low comedy. The rapid-fire snark between the main characters of Tulip and Junior hearken back to the old Howard Hawks workplace comedies of the 1930s, which is definitely an acquired taste in the post-narrative style of humor found in kids entertainment today--where non-sequiturs and punchlines exist in a vacuum and visual comedy is derived from abstraction rather than plasticity. But the comedic energy and the variety of jokes from modern "Office"-style cringe (Pigeon Toady) to the machine-gun-speed HIS GIRL FRIDAYy-style verbal sparring (Tulip & Junior), absurdism (the wolves), post-modern meta-humor (the boy and his parents) to classical WB slapstick of yesteryear, and the film is riotously funny because of it. At the end of the day, that's what STORKS wants to be: FUNNY.

STORKS is not a great film. It's not a masterpiece like TOY STORY or UP. It won't win any Oscars and it won't be everyone's cup of tea. But there's an excellent chance that it will live on as a multi-generational favorite for the same reasons as dumb-fun-with-a-heart-of-gold treasures like SPACEBALLS, DUMB & DUMBER, THE NAKED GUN, and NATIONAL LAMPOONS CHRISTMASs VACATION:

Because you can watch it 1,000 times and it will NEVER stop being funny.

So try it out. There's a 50-50 chance you'll be among the ones who can't stop watching it.