For an animated movie about where babies come from (they're delivered by air, of course), ‘Storks’ is targeted at very young viewers. This is a film for little ones who won’t mind gobbling down a slightly bland film that vaguely recalls ‘Inside Out’ and ‘The Lion King’. It’s not lazy; if anything, it’s trying too hard with its tale of Junior (voiced by Andy Samberg), a handsome bird set to inherit the empire of his stern father (Kelsey Grammer), who has overseen the transition of storks from the infant business to shipping mobile phones and consumer products. But when a human baby mysteriously appears in the factory, it’s got to be dispatched too, right?
Apart from one muted action sequence in which the participants try not to wake a sleeping bundle of joy, there’s little humour here for adults (and Samberg’s usual snark has been sanded down to a nub). It may be that we’ve come to expect our animated movies to function on too many levels: witty diversions for parents as well as adventures for kids. ‘Storks’ isn’t terrible; there’s some airy poetry to the images – especially an elongated stork headquarters high in the sky. And the no-nonsense voices of Jennifer Aniston and Ty Burrell (as a human married couple) go a long way to making it bearable.