Storks: Guide to Your New Baby – Pigeon Toady’s Guide to Your New Baby (2016)

Directed by: Matt Flynn, Doug Sweetland | 2 minutes | animation, short film, comedy, family | Original voice cast: Katie Crown, Stephen Kramer Glickman, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele, Andy Samberg

Not everyone was equally enthusiastic about the animated film ‘Storks’ (2016). The concept, about storks moving with the times and using an online delivery service to deliver babies to their parents, is still pretty cool. The big flaw with the film, however, is the too fast pace, the low joke density and the script in general. Not all of the characters came out well either. And now it turns out that one of the loudest characters, Pigeon Toady, has gotten its own spin-off (sort of)…

On the blu-ray of ‘Storks’ we find ‘Pigeon Toady’s Guide to Your New Baby’ (2016), a short animated film in which the otherworldly, screaming for attention and meddling pigeon Pigeon Toady – unsolicited? – gives advice on how to handle newborn babies. The idea is that it’s funny because he has no idea what he’s doing. But just like with the main film, the pranks all pass by at high speed, so that a joke has barely landed before something new comes along. And it’s not all that funny. The pay-off also doesn’t work out the way the makers intended it to be.

The only nice thing is that the wolves from the main film, who can take all kinds of forms together, are also reviewed here. Unlike Pigeon Toady, they don’t need a single word to grab the viewer’s attention. They therefore form a pleasant beacon of tranquility in this raging little tidbit.