Film Review - A Stork's Journey (2017)

Synopsis
A stork’s journey is an uplifting family tale about a heroic little sparrow who aims high and dreams big. Richard, orphaned at birth and raised by storks, believes that he is a stork! But when his adoptive flock prepare to migrate, his true identity is revealed he is left behind. Determined to prove he is a stork, Richard ventures on an epic adventure, to unleash his true potential and reunite with his family.

Review – Contains spoilers

A stork’s journey starts in with heart-break like many good family films! The parents to Richard, the sparrow, are eaten just as he is hatching!! The film is U so you don’t see anything, just a floating feather and an empty nest except for a small, cracking open egg!

Richard is rescued by a mothering stork and she takes him home to meet her baby son and husband, who’s a bit stiff!

Richard grows up believing he’s a stork and even learns how to sleep standing on one leg, but as Autumn comes it’s time for the storks to fly south to migrate. Richard is told that he can’t go, he would never survive the flight and the storks can not stay as they would never survive the winter.

To say Richard is a stubborn bird who is hard to warm to is an understatement! He’s more like his stork father than Max, the actual stork baby! He may be a little arrogant but your heart goes out to him as he settles down for the night tucked up like a sparrow and not a stork, as you know they’re going to fly without him. His big brother is so upset by this and is easier to warm to.

They fly off without Richard!

Alone Richard refuses to be left and makes his way south to be with his family, but as a tiny sparrow he’s fair game for vampire bats that come at him, but as luck would have it a very eccentric Owl comes to his rescue. I’m 30 minutes in and I haven’t warmed to either Richard or the Owl. It must be the mum in me as my son was loving the film.

I do start to get a twinge of guilt thinking the film is going to take some awful turn and I’m going to get sparrow guilt!

Richard the Sparrow, Olga the owl and their new friend Kiki the parrot all make their way South and we follow their adventure along the way, nice and light with various humour events along the way until the moment comes when Richard realises he is a sparrow and says some really mean things to his friend Olga.

She has an imaginary friend which is what makes her come across quirky, but her back story is also a sad one where her family didn’t want her, she was too big and once she was too big for the nest and fell out the tree her family didn’t allow her back in.

This is when Olga found her imaginary friend, he keeps her safe and she’s never alone again!

The film finally sees the birds reach Africa and Richard’s family and even though he now knows he’s a sparrow, he also knows that the storks are his family.

The film has rather an emotion and lovely ending and is a lovely family film the whole family can get behind, after all, even the pigeons are online these days!