Le voyage de Ricky

I have not written a review for a long time, but after seeing "Richard the Stork" today, I felt obligated to warn others off this appalling film. The story line about an animal trying to fit in with a different species is overused and cliché. None of the different bird characters Richard hooks up with are funny, interesting, or believable.

The simple plot of the story is that Richard, in trying to stay with his adoptive Stork family, follows them on a haphazard route to Africa. His entanglements are absurd, emotionally uninteresting, and chaotic. There is no real drama in this film or heartfelt relationships alá "Beauty and the Beast", "Toy Story", or even "Bambi". The writing was hardly clever and the dialogue for most of the film was utter nonsense. Even the conflict between mama and papa Stork on whether or not Richard could be a member of the family was mind-boggling simplistic and cliché. I give it a 3, but only for the animation.

This is the first full length animated Movie made namely in Luxembourg which I could view in Luxembourgish. The story is rather simple but the animations are world class and the dialogs, at least in Luxembourgish, are funny, namely because they are playing nicely with the particularities of the language. I hope the translations are just as good. The movie includes also a few nice novel ideas, namely on how birds use the social media (not a spoiler: watch it to discover how). I really liked watching the movie and my kids (4 and 7) adored it. It is a movie for the whole family not to be missed.

"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!

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.

I had the opportunity to watch it at the Anima Festival (Brussels) before it gets released in the theaters in my country. Very nice surprise!

The main character is a bit stubborn like children can be, while the supportive characters are mostly crazy, fun, kind and emotional, which makes an interesting cocktail.

As the film is centered on birds, it's kind of a (sky)road movie with enriching encounters, discoveries about yourself for the main character and interesting places.

Some very funny scenes for both kids and adults, it's been a pleasure! Go and watch it... and bring your kids / godchildren / little cousins, etc.!