Storks - Movie Content Review

Corporate yes-man, Junior the stork, was supposed to fire human orphan, Tulip, as his final act before becoming boss.  However, Tulip accidentally turned on the Stork's abandoned baby factory and one baby was made before the machine could be shut off.  Junior reluctantly agrees to travel with Tulip on a secret quest to deliver the human baby before anyone notices.

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Message

Storks has a pro-family message, but its representation of family is dysfunctional.  At first Nate, the older brother of the baby Tulip and Junior are delivering, is essentially ignored by his parents.  But by the end of the movie the parents have become fully invested in enjoying spending time with him.  Additionally, Junior and Tulip become like a family as the movie progresses; but their family dynamic has them constantly bickering with each other.

This movie has several characters stereotypical with corporate and bro culture.  The current boss, Hunter, is a stereotypical intimidating and controlling alpha male personality.  Junior is a corporate over-achieving middle man that's trying to simultaneously get ahead and be friends with everyone.  Pidgeon Toady constantly says "bruh", backstabs to get ahead, and seeks attention.  These characters and their stereotypical lingo are very over the top; adults will either find them hilarious or overwhelmingly cringe.

There's a lot of jokes meant for adults.  Many of them are focused around corporate office work, but there's also several jokes around the question "where do baby's come from?".  It's quite likely that a child who doesn't already understand the origin of babies will ask you that very question after watching this movie.

Content

Language

The phrase "oh my gosh" is used.  See the Family & Relationships section for additional language related information.

There is no swearing in this movie.

Fears

Junior, Tulip, and the baby are kidnapped multiple times.

Playing into his stereotype, Hunter becomes a bad guy after he learns that Junior disobeyed his orders.  He's not scary, but his strong personality and the fact that he's going after the baby makes him a strong villain some children may find uncomfortable.

There are no scary storms, fires, scary monsters, clowns, scary darkness, or home break-ins.

Family & Relationships

There's a lot of lying, deception, and manipulation.  In the moment it's typically presented as funny, and any negative repercussions happen later.

Nate and his parents have a poor relationship at the beginning of the movie.  They promise they'll do things with him but instead choose work, argue over who's going to spend time with him, and only want to dedicate 5 minutes to him at a time.  Meanwhile Nate speaks to them disrespectfully without consequence, including muttering things under his breath.  As the movie progresses their relationship improves, but it's all based off the parent's lie that the storks are bringing a baby brother.  When Nate learns of the lie he's crushed, but the parents have no consequences as the baby is soon delivered by Junior and Tulip and all is well again.

Junior and Tulip take on parental roles for the baby during their quest, and they are used to make many parenting related jokes for the enjoyment of the parents that are watching.  Unfortunately those roles and jokes are based on negative parenting stereotypes, so they end up bickering with each other for most of the movie.

A towel flies off of Pigeon Toady and his lower half is pixelated, at which point he announces that his towel has blown away.  Baby girl chests (bare and without detail) are shown.  Baby butts are shown.

Tulip was unable to be delivered as a baby, so she was raised by the storks.  Her people family and adoptive stork family are discussed and compared several times.

The stereotypical corporate culture may be seen by children as bully-like.

There is no divorce, loss of a loved one, sneaking out, or running away. 

Other Content

A baby factory takes letters from families and produces babies for them.  The storks then deliver those babies.

There's no specific evolution reference, but there is one brief flashback that includes a cave woman and several scenes relating to maternal instinct. 

There's some minor cartoon violence, like characters running into things or getting hit with boards.

There's a couple jokes for the adults that seemed like they may have had a political reference.

At the end of the movie is a montage of different families receiving their babies from the storks.  There appears to be at least a half dozen homosexual couples; two of them are very obvious as they're in the beginning of the montage when it's slower.  This montage comes right before Junior and Tulip deliver the baby to Nate's family, so you can't just turn off the movie before it is shown.

There's no time travel, intense feelings invoked, or religion.

Conclusion

Storks is what happens when a kid's movie gets injected with so much adult humor that it becomes questionable for children to watch.  It's possible the adult content goes unnoticed, but it's equally possible that children do pick up on it; you'll have to decide if it's worth showing it to your children.  Additionally, since the culture and bickering is difficult to articulate, I suggest watching a couple of those clips online to see them for yourself.