Director: Nicholas Stoller, Doug Sweetland.
Voiced by: Andy Samberg, Katie Crown, Kelsey Grammer, Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, Anton Starkman.
Impressively, Bad Neighbours and Forgetting Sarah Marshall director, Nicholas Stoller directs his first animated movie along with Pixar animator/director Doug Sweetland about, well, Storks as a global delivery service that USE to deliver babies in the mythical, traditional sense and now deliver electrical goods instead.
We follow Junior, who's likely to inherit the position of booosssssss once Hunter (Kelsey Grammer) moves on up, however his first task of the day is to fire Tulip, the human catastrophe orphan that wrecks havoc whenever she decides to help. As expected, and as the trailer suggests, things don't go to plan and there's an incredibly adorable baby involved who needs delivering to her wanting brother, which leads the unfortunate pair on a funny, haphazard adventure.
The Lonely Island comedy superstar Andy Samberg voices Junior superbly, I didn't even recognise the voice, actually sounding much older than the Samberg I know and he works so well with animated voice actress Katie Crown who voices Tulip. Watching the relationship form and crumble between the two was entertaining, witty and touching.
The creativity with this film is brilliant and the animation itself stunning. The penguin silent fight, the love-lusting wolves with incredible yet hilarious group-abilities it pushes the boundaries even for an animated movie and actually parodies itself in parts, "what are the chances of that?"
They manage to squeeze in quite a lot for 87mins, not saying that it drags because it really doesn't; it's fast paced, quick-witted and loaded with silly action that ignores plot holes and just skims right over them. Again, really not a bad thing and purely there for comedy effect.
As with all good family movies, there's a couple of good strong moral lessons here which are quite touching and honest. Sharing family quality time and asking the question, what is family? Or, who are family? You could hear the "awww" from the audience and yeah, I was touched only to then be made to laugh at the heartache watching Junior trying to comes to terms with it all.
There's a good soundtrack with tracks from Jason Derulo, REO Speedwagon, Talking Heads and Vance Joy with a great original track "Holdin' Out" from The Lumineers. Brothers Mychael and Jeff Danna do a typical animated score covering a wide stream of styles and sounds to help emboss the mood and atmosphere of the story.
I enjoyed this film from start to finish, finding it hilarious, entertaining and heartfelt. I really hope the kids enjoy this as much as I did. I could go watch this again.
Running Time: 8
The Cast: 9
Performance: 9
Direction: 9
Story: 7
Script: 8
Creativity: 10
Soundtrack: 7
Job Description: 10
The Extra Bonus Point: 10 for the sharp wit, the wolf submarine with sonar pinging wolf and the silent fight.
Would I buy the Blu-ray?: Yes!
87% 9/10
