Stork (1971) User Reviews

Liked the movie very much.

[tlfeet · 7/10 · 25 November 2002]

It is good fun and its quirkiness is endearing. Some of the comedy is hilarious. While some of the jokes are inside Aussie stuff, it should appeal to a wider audience.

I saw it 30 years ago and it is still stuck in my brain.

Embarrassing, nauseating, entertaining

[Groverdox · 7/10 · 23 March 2016]

1971's "Stork" is a curiosity; some would say it is embarrassingly dated, yet it is still entertaining either despite this or because of it, depending on your point of view.

The set up is a fairly typical "fish out of water" story in which "Stork", the aptly nicknamed six-foot-seven titular bean pole, quits his job and crash lands in a friend's fashionable pad, where three men share the one beautiful girl, whom the credits tell us is named Anna but is only ever referred to by the other characters as "moll".

It is a bit disheartening to see future Oscar winner Jacki Weaver constantly denigrated as such, but she doesn't seem to mind. She is beautiful, talented, sexy. She lights up the screen. Without her the movie would be hard to trudge through, the company of the other characters not something you'd actively seek.

Aside from Weaver there are some amusing lines. The movie uses the trick of regular dream sequences in which the ungainly, excitable Stork imagines himself in a variety of different roles, such as arctic explorer looking to "strangle a darkie" (did I mention the movie is embarrassing to modern viewers?), AFL footballer, and modern artist whose technique is to throw up on the canvas.

The movie is a trifle nauseating along with the awkwardness it causes but it is at least entertaining from beginning to end.

An interesting Australian film made in the early 70's mode

[ausalf · 9 August 1999]

This is an interesting comedy produced during the resurgence of the Australian film industry in the early 70's. Although the film maybe hard to understand to those from other nations due to local slang and references, the film which by todays standards may seem a little corney, is a genuine comedy about a the very tall Stork who is a communist, a dreamer and a virgin who spends his time worrying about catching every type of illness imaginable. The storyline is fair and the acting acceptable. A good way to waste a hour and a half if you don't take it too seriously.

The best movie ever to come out of Australia

[lucyalpha · 10/10 · 26 January 2006]

In 1971 I was 13... probably didn't see the movie for about another 5 or so years...but when I saw it....It made so much sense. & it was an excellent cinema experience.... OK...the story... boy chucks job.. boy meets other guys' sheila..boy hangs about.... until sheila and he goes hammer and tongs...a bit of a triangle ensues.... The sheila has this emotional compass theory which is rather cute...

To my mind....Stork is the best movie ever made in Australia... And that Bruce Spence never won an Oscar for his stand up performance?.... .... ... Who knows why?...There must've been a conspiracy.... The film to my thinking was an absolute standout. Watch it and enjoy. Jackie Weaver :) is miles better than Sigourney in her undies... Any day.

Satirical swipe at the Aussie Establishment

[El-Stumpo · 8 October 2003]

WARNING: PLOT SPOILERS! 1971's Stork, while not technically a sex comedy, is one of the earliest Aussie films to feature topless nudity courtesy of Jacki Weaver and deals with the main character's cartoonish sex drive. Stork is a blue collar yahoo with Marxist aspirations (or in the words of one of the characters, a `six foot deranged revolutionary') played with manic enthusiasm by the gangly bespectacled Bruce Spence, much seen over the last 30 years but criminally underused in a slew of supporting roles. Stork quits his job at GMH to drop out and `join the bloody revolution'; being an Aussie male, he naturally is more concerned with footy and beer and his various paranoiac obsessions about his health and his virginity. Also a hopeless mooch, he crashes with his hapless mate Westy (Graeme Blundell) and ingratiates himself into his student pad much to the annoyance of flatmates Clyde and Tony, both of whom are dating emotionally uncommitted flower child Anna (Jacki Weaver) who Stork promptly labels `the Moll'. Her wildly spinning emotional compass soon swings around to his direction, and the gormlessly romantic Stork is smitten. During the film's rapid fire 90 minutes, urged along by Burstall's on-the-run 16mm camera, Stork manages to disrupt a university lecture, is almost eaten alive by a sexually voracious feminist, and charges into Anna's wedding to Tony in a firetruck, drenching the guests while quoting Marx through a loudspeaker.

In Stork's `one out, all out' satirical swipe, even modern art gets a heady serve. Stork imagines himself an art guru dabbling in `chunderscapes' by wolfing down a mountain of cheese and tallies; dream girl Anna declares his work `the most intoxicating new art form of the 20th Century.' David Williamson's script, based on his play `The Coming Of Stork' is so loaded to the bloody gills with ockerisms that it almost outdoes Bazza MacKenzie in the cultural cringe stakes. In fact I'm sure it's the first film that mentions that abominable term for going to the toilet - `to strangle a darkie' - while imagining himself as an Antarctic explorer next to Burstall's usual editor and cinematographer (and future directors of Alvin Rides Again), David Bilcock and Robin Copping.