Rated G
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, will i am, Jamie Foxx, George Lopez, Tracy Morgan
Director: Carlos Saldanha
With animation being inherently colorful and vivacious, the only thing 3D does is dampen the very qualities that distinguish them in the first place. Images are always less crisp and a film's color palette takes a hit with the added dimension. Plus, I can't imagine parents enjoy the prospect of paying an additional fee for glasses that their little ones probably won't keep on their head throughout the duration of the movie.
"Rio" takes place--obviously--in Rio De Janiero during the Carnival of Brazil festival. It's as colorful as any movie out there. Twentieth Century Fox made the wise decision to offer the movie in both 2D as well as 3D. By all means, look for the 2D.
While it doesn't possess the dry wit of "Rango" or the sentimental resonance of Disney Pixar, it is nonetheless colorful, briskly paced, and at times genuinely funny.
The story opens with a cheerful musical number involving all manner of exotic birds in the jungles of South America. But before the curtain can fall, so to speak, the performing avifauna are captured, caged, and shipped to the U.S. While en route to their forced habitat, one of the cages falls from a truck on the frozen tundra of Moose Lake, Minnesota. Inside the cage is a baby blue macaw. He is discovered by a girl and raised in the most domesticated surroundings. As a result, the macaw never learned to fly.
Cut to years later. The girl has matured into a book store owner named Linda (Leslie Mann). The macaw, appropriately named Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) has become so acclimated to his surroundings that the bars of his cage are a comfort. One day, a South American bird expert named Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro) stumbles into the store upon seeing Blu in the window. He is captivated. Tulio convinces Linda to take Blu down to Rio with him and attempt to mate, as the species is becoming extinct. Linda reluctantly agrees.
To a domesticated bird, Rio is a revelation. Fascinating and scary. He is placed into an artificial habitat with a female macaw named Jewel (Anne Hathaway). It's a rough start. Blu is a little too intimidated to mate, while Jewel wants only to escape. Despite being "egged on" to the task with a strategically-placed disco ball and a Lionel Ritchie tune, the mating doesn't take place. In the dead of night, the two birds are kidnapped by smugglers and shackled together. (A nice little reference to "The Defiant Ones.")
They eventually escape the smugglers, but remain chained together. As Blu can't fly, the two are reduced to running as a means to escape... a tall order for a bird. ("Remember, inside leg. Then outside leg. Inside-outside, inside-outside, inside-outside! Faster! FASTER!") With the help of a couple party-going feathered friends (Jamie Foxx and Will i Am), an exasperated toucan named Rafael (George Lopez), and a whiny bulldog named Luiz (voiced by the equally whiny Tracy Morgan), Blu and Jewel embark on an adventure to free themselves, and return Blu to his worried owner.
What keeps the movie from the highest echelons of animation is the lack of a sentimental arc, but it does attempt to make up for that with some decent comic bits. Rafael has managed to father umpteen kids, and finds himself at the end of his rope of sanity. ("Put your brother down!" he chastises two little ones as they toss an egg.) The film gets a lot of humorous mileage out of its villains as well. The head smuggler is accompanied by the two dumbest henchmen in Brazil, the only thing separating their respective levels of intellect is one's ability to outsmart the other in rock-paper-scissors. ("No, no, you got it wrong. Scissors cuts rock!" cries one. "Damn. How do you always win?" laments the other.)
There are comic bits aplenty along with some decent musical numbers, though they do seem awfully short. (My favorite involved a team of thieving monkeys.) The film isn't groundbreaking animation, but it is fun, vibrant, and much too colorful to be dampened by the 3D effect. Seek out the 2D. It's less money for more enjoyment.
* * * out of * * * * stars
