Director: Nicholas Stoller, Doug Sweetland Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Genre(s): Comedy Rated: PG (For mild action and some thematic elements) |
It seems oddly fitting that a movie about a bird trying to
deliver a cute baby who spends most of the movie crying should itself spend
most of the time being the equivalent of a $60 million dollar method for waving
keys in front of the audiences faces. I
understand that animation has gotten more energetic and free spirited these
days, but the art of true cartoon movement is being lost more and more every
year. Here is a movie that comes from
Warner Bros, the company who used to be the undisputed masters of animation in
terms of comedy (“Looney Tunes”) and drama (“The Iron Giant”), now reduced to
making a movie where the animation doesn’t slow down, stop, or so much as
pause. Like the keys you wave in front
of your own child to lure them into a dazed sleep, “Storks” just keeps jumping
around until the audience is too sleepy to even care.
Even with the impressive 3D visuals on a giant IMAX screen I
found myself slouching in my seat, head leaning against my knuckles, trying to
pay attention while the occasional sound of a five year pacing behind me asked
his mom if the movie was over yet. Every
time I buckled down and paid attention to the screen I found myself confused:
each scene felt exactly like the last with no variation to be found. What was on the screen could certainly be
considered cute. How couldn’t it? It has babies, birds, and a college aged red
head girl in it! How then, with so many
cute images, could the movie not elicit anything else than a “eh, I guess
that’s cute” from me? What’s more
surprising is that “Storks” is a movie that actually has a good idea behind
it. Like, it has a REALLY good idea
behind it, in the fact that it tells the story about how storks used to deliver
babies for a living, but got out of the business so they could deliver smart
phones instead!
Ironically, “Storks” is preceded by a LEGO short. You may recall that Warner Bros. released
“The LEGO Movie” last year, which was of such great quality I even selected it
as one of the best films of the year.
That movie was based on a concept that was doomed to fail, yet the
studio did something great with it. “Storks,”
as a movie, is a concept destined to succeed, and the studio seems to have done
everything in their power to make it crash.
Having the short before the feature is a reminder of just how much the
company was able to revive their animation legacy with just one film, and to
have “Storks” be shown right afterwards is all the more heartbreaking to
witness. The movie was co-directed by
Nicholas Stoller (who directed “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”) and Doug Sweetland
(who previously directed shorts for Pixar).
What I find particularly strange about this combination is
that on paper it sounds like this should be a dream team. Stoller understands humor very well while
Sweetland has demonstrated that he understands the art of movement in animation
with his Oscar-nominated short “Presto.”
The more I think about it the more I’m confused that something halfway
decent didn’t come out of this collaboration.
Maybe the combination didn’t work because Stoller has more interest in
live action comedies, where as Sweetland’s directorial style may be suited
better to shorts than with features. But
whether through conflicting interests or lack of experience in feature
animation, the duo have proven to be a toxic combination, as “Storks” is not
only the worst animated film of the year, but one of the worst films of the
year period, one that will only temporarily save parents from having to explain
to their kids where babies come from.
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| CONSUMER ADVICE |
Parents, aside from being really stupid, there really isn't anything of concern here. Recommended for all ages.
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