Krishna
In a world crammed full with animated movies each edgier than the other, a story about storks delivering babies? Will it work? You may be right to wonder. You start watching this movie with misgivings but then the story slowly pulls you in and insidiously absorbs you that within the first quarter of the movie, you are fully into the movie and start liking it. I would not claim that this is one of the best animated movies, it is not, but it is very nice, lovely and the story is presented in a really great fashion that it leaves you with the feeling of having seen a good, entertaining movie.
The story is predicated on storks bringing babies. Hunter, a businessman, spots a chance to do a mass production of baby deliveries. Hunter is voiced by the ubiquitous Kelsey Grammer of the Frasier, Cheers and countless other shows. (He does them well, I grant you). The ‘factory’ is managed and owned entirely by storks. Yes, Hunter is one too. The only human there is Trudy, a relic from the past. But unfortunately Trudy is so clumsy that she is destructive. The job of firing her is assigned by Hunter to Junior, a young ambitious stork and the reward will be an instant promotion for the young Junior.
Junior meets Trudy and realizes that she is actually a good soul, kind and really dedicated. She just does not seem to be able to do anything right. Instead of firing her, Junior tells her that she has been reassigned to the mail room. There has never been a mail received in years. So she will be safely out of sight.
However, one letter does arrive. A lonely child ignored by very busy parents focused on their professional life writes to the factory begging them for a sibling for him. Trudy gets it and starts the baby factory. An alarmed Junior tries to stop her but it is too late, the baby has been made. Now he is in a panic and to save his job and to ensure that Hunter does not find out what he did with Trudy, he decided to secretly deliver the baby where it belongs and pretend none of this ever happened.
Since Junior’s wing is injured in the fracas, he needs a flying machine and Tulip volunteers to provide one and also fly it for him. Of course the first thing that happens is that they crash the plane!
As he travels with her, captured by wolves and escaping later, they get closer and Junior discovers that he really did not want the promotion. He also learn that Tulip really wants to track her own home to be with her parents.
Meanwhile, Hunter learns of the treachery through a stork envious of Junior (called Pigeon Toady, really a corny name in attempts of humour) and reprograms their beacon (which is really a GPS kind of device that tells them which house to go to deliver the baby).
How come Trudy was in the factory in the first place? She was a baby to be delivered but Jasper, the stork assigned to deliver her refused to, and destroyed the beacon, so she grew up there itself. He comes back now to save them from another Wolf pack attack.
After a ton of more misadventures, twists and turns all ends well for the duo and in the true animated movie style, they get everything: their deep friendship, ownership of the delivery business, Tulip’s real parents etc etc.
Nice. 7/10
– – Krishna (Sep 2017)