When you're sitting in an animated film surrounded by laughing kids obviously enjoying the film, it's pretty hard to sit down and right a review trashing the film.

It just ain't right, ya' know?

Despite an overly and unnecessarily plot heavy script from Nicholas Stoller (The Muppets, Sex Tape), Storks is a late summer entry that is clearly seen as a lesser flick or it would have been released among this year's more family friendly mid-summer calendar or saved for the awards season rush.

Trust me, Storks isn't going to be mentioned come awards season.

Storks is harmless enough. Junior, voiced by Andy Samberg, is a highly principled stork who doesn't deliver babies because, well, storks got out of that business years ago and now spend most of their time delivering for the behemoth Cornerstone.com. Of course, there's actually more to the story - the storks found themselves in a bit of a controversy nearly 20 years ago when a stork became overly attached to a baby they were delivering, a baby we will know as Tulip (Katie Crown), now 18-years-old and a rather inept employee of said behemoth helmed by Hunter (Kelsey Grammer). Fed up with her ineptness, Hunter instructs Junior to can her, but the relentlessly nice Junior hesitates and before he can get around to it she accidentally pushes the start button on the company's long dormant babymaking machine.

Um, yeah. Try explaining that one to your kids.

Before long, the machine pops out a baby intended as the new baby sister for Nate (Anton Starkman), a lonely kid whose parents (Ty Burrell and Jennifer Aniston) aren't exactly the most attentive folks around. The task for Junior and Tulip becomes how to arrange for delivery of a product long since left behind, a task that involves a pair of mighty funny wolves, Alpha (Keegan Michael-Key) and Beta (Jordan Peele), whom you might think are going to eat the baby ("Don't eat the baby!," I say in my inevitable "South Park" voice) but who show a side of themselves we might not expect.

Most of what unfolds in Storks you will likely expect. Tulip is an interesting creation of a character, never particularly compelling and lacking all the charm and wonder of, let's just say, a Buddy the Elf type of character.

Storks isn't a bad film, but neither is it a particularly entertaining or memorable one. While there will be kids who will enjoy it, as evidenced by the googly-eyed kiddos that surrounded me as I watched the film, this is one for the adults to tolerate and the kids to likely forget by the end of the day.

© Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic