By Subhash K. Jha
Film: "Storks" (3D Animation);
Directors: Nicholas Stollar, Doug Sweetland; Rating: ***1/2
Rating: ***1/2
While the nation and its favourite cricket commentator swooned over Dhoni's biopic over the weekend, a tender sweet confection on the pleasures of a baby boom nearly got swept under the cheering hysteria of a nation obsessed with cricket.
"Storks", in case you've missed it, is a charming creation. Its writers, brilliant minds wrapping themselves around ostensibly trivial ideas, like sturdy women's legs in satiny stockings, have concerned themselves with the mythology of storks bringing babies to families. The myth was used for generations by parents to keep their impressionable children in the dark about the sexual act.
Now in a state of procreative perestroika, the storks myth about how babies are born is obsolete. This endearing animation films plots a sly and svelte narrative around the myth, with the storks-helmed factory now converted into a courier service.
When a baby is accidentally born at the defunct factory, an ambitious stork Junior and a feisty 18-year old girl Tulipa -- the "only human in the courier factory" -- take off on a trip to deliver the baby to their parents. The voices of Andy Samberg and Katie Crown lend vivacious voice-personalities to the two characters. The 'delivery' dynamics between Junior and Tulip are so robustly charted, we go through the twosome's journey in a state of soporific surrender.
"Storks" gives us some unforgettable characters. The picaresque plot propels the two main characters and their little baby through high-velocity adventures, all expertly packaged.
There's a parallel story about a family of workaholic parents and their lonely son who craves for a sibling. The message of humanism, kinship, camaraderie and a reclamation of values lost in the bustle of technological advancement, comes across most strongly in this cute and solidly entertaining drama.
Not to be missed.
