'Storks': Super annoying animated adventure,with Adam Samberg, Jennifer Aniston, Kelsey Grammer

The average Looney Tunes cartoon runs six to eight minutes, 10 minutes tops. But time is slippery. One second can feel like a lifetime - especially when Daffy Duck is on screen.

The single most annoying character in cartoon history, that guy would make me just miserable as a kid.

I thought I was finally free of the motormouth agony - until I encountered this year's latest big-budget 3D animated family feature, Storks, which felt to me like 89 minutes of Daffy-Duck-level torture.

A $70 million, obnoxious comic adventure yarn about long-necked birds, diapers, and babies, Storks tries to combine the cuteness factor of newborns with the edgy comedy of Looney Tunes and Saturday Night Live.

People seem to like it - it elicited applause from adults and kids alike at a recent screening. I guess I must be allergic.

Featuring an impressive lineup of voice actors, including Andy Samberg, Jennifer Aniston, Kelsey Grammer, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, and Danny Trejo, Storks is about a parallel universe that knows nothing of the fleshy reality of reproductive biology.

Babies, you see, are manufactured in a really big machine, then spat out on conveyor belts, where robotic arms wash and powder them, put them in diapers, and hand them to an army of storks for home delivery.

At least, that's how things used to be in Storks land. In the movie's present-day scenario, newborns just pop up out of nowhere, I guess, because, instead of flying babies around, storks now work for a massive, Amazon.com-type online-retail outlet.

In a weak stab at corporate satire, Storks portrays the company as an efficient, soulless empire ruled by the despotic alpha stork Hunter (Grammer), who loathes human children.

His world comes crashing down when his protégé Junior (Samberg) and the company's only human employee, Tulip (Katie Crown), accidentally switch on the baby-making machine and pop out one lil' bairn.

Many adventures are had, and much hilarity (of a kind) follows when the two rebellious employees try to sneak baby out and take her to her rightful family before Hunter catches on.

Storks feels way too much like a belabored and mediocre SNL sketch. Each character has some neurotic tic or crazy fixation, which they expound upon in monologues that feel like material for a stand-up act or a sitcom.

It makes sense if you consider that the film was written by Nicholas Stoller (Neighbors, Zoolander 2) who got his start writing for TV sitcoms, including Judd Apatow's short-lived Fox show Undeclared.

Storks tries to cover up its flat comedy with a pace that is so relentlessly fast, so hyperactive, it'll give you a headache.

The narrative problems aside, the movie creeped me out: The birds have these full sets of big, glistening white teeth, and their feathers form into fingers. And the babies have alarmingly massive, mirrorlike eyes. How can you not have nightmares after seeing that?

No doubt, a lot of people will find the film's humor edgy. I think it's about as sharp as Donald Duck's beak.

tirdad@phillynews.com

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Storks

** (Out of four stars)

Directed by Nicholas Stoller and Doug Sweetland. With Andy Samberg, Kelsey Grammer, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Jennifer Aniston. Distributed by Warner Bros.

Running time: 1 hour, 29 mins.

Parent's guide: PG (mild action and some thematic elements).

Playing at: Area theaters.

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