Sunday, September 25, 2016

Storks [2016]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (C+)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Storks [2016] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Nicholas Stoller along with Doug Sweetland) makes for a remarkably insightful (or at least hopeful) children's parable about priorities.

Where do babies come from?  Well, storks, of course, bring them to families that wanted them.  I don't know if that was the explanation my folks used when I first asked this question, but I always liked it as a nice age appropriate explanation for young kids who couldn't possibly understand the real answer ;-).

Well if this was the case -- that storks bring babies into the world to families that wanted them -- in the past generation this has proven to be a problem: Both storks and (potential) parents found babies to be ... well kind of a hassle.  So ... (potential) parents _stopped_ asking for babies _and_ storks led by a particularly "business savy" head stork (voiced by Kelsey Grammer) "repositioned" the storks into "delivering" less problematic items -- consumer electronics -- for a new (and omnipresent) Amazon-like company called "cornerstore.com";-). 

And nobody, neither the storks nor people, seemed to mind until ... a somewhat neglected little boy named Nate Gardner (voiced by Anton Starkman) asked his ever-on-their-cell-phones parents Henry and Sarah (voiced by Ty Burrell and Jennifer Aniston) -- running some sort of a real estate business out of their home -- that he'd REALLY WANT "a baby brother" to play with.  How to fit _that_ in?  The parents initially are _definitely_ NOT "on board."  So ... Nate decides to "write the storks" himself. 

Well the storks "aren't in the baby delivery business anymore" anyway.  So the letter is destined to be "returned to sender" BUT ... BY HAPPENSTANCE ... this letter manages to get through, and the LONG MOTHBALLED "baby making machine" up there on a perch on a faraway mountain in the clouds, starts-up and makes a CUTE AS A BUTTON baby for Nate.  And ... seeing this cute as a button baby ("after all these years") despite calls by the "head stork" to "not get distracted" and just continue to deliver the consumer electronics that they're now delivering, the CUTE AS A BUTTON baby proves FAR MORE INTERESTING (first to the storks and _eventually_ to potential parents) and ... the rest of the story ensues ... ;-)

It's honestly A LOVELY STORY ... PEOPLE (and especially KIDS) prove FAR MORE INTERESTING than "stuff" ;-)

Great job folks!  GREAT JOB! ;-)


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