Storks

With a glut of animated features flooding the marketplace, one challenge for filmmakers is finding fresh concepts while still fulfilling the expectations of young moviegoers.

Delivering that balance is a dilemma for Storks, in which a quirky and subversive concept loses any meaningful substance amid all the 3D spectacle.

Conventional wisdom tells us that storks deliver babies. But it turns out they gave that up a while back for the more lucrative task of transporting merchandise for an Amazon clone, based out of a mammoth warehouse on Stork Mountain.

Junior (voiced by Andy Samberg) is on the cusp of an executive promotion when he falls victim to a mistake by the bumbling Tulip (Katie Crown), a former human orphan who grew up with the storks. Specifically, she activates the long-dormant Baby Making Machine, creating a baby girl in response to a desperate letter from a youngster hoping for a sibling.

As the problem is magnified, Junior and Tulip are forced to make their most important delivery in order to rectify the situation. Along the way, both learn their true place in the world.

You might expect a healthy dose of offbeat animal antics, and Storks certainly has that, along with some colorful and crisply detailed computer-generated animation and a lively voice cast that includes Jennifer Aniston, Ty Burrell, and Kelsey Grammer.

The uneven screenplay by co-director Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors), making his first foray into animated filmmaking, includes an amusing satire of office politics before the bulk of the film strains to be cute and poignant.

The central journey is fraught with the obligatory perilous complications, such as a wintry encounter with a pack of rabid wolves, before getting carried away during an elaborate finale that conveys predictable lessons about the power of imagination and the value of family.

To its credit, the film avoids some lowbrow pitfalls and manages some effective sight gags (one involving the relationship between birds and glass windows is a highlight). However, the result is more obnoxious than endearing.

With its throwback premise, Storks might be a lighthearted setback for sex-education classes and it might infuriate the carrier pigeon community for its logistical assumptions. The rest of us don’t have much to get worked up about.

Rated PG, 89 minutes.