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Rio
| Released |
8 April 2011 |
| Director |
Carlos Saldanha |
Starring
|
Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santuro, George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, Tracy Morgan |
| Writer(s) |
Don Rhymer |
| Producer(s) |
Bruce Anderson, John C. Donkin |
| Origin |
Canada, United States |
| Running Time |
96 minutes |
| Genre |
Animation, adventure |
| Rating |
G |
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Colourful.
Rio is the sixth feature from Blue Sky Studios, who are a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox. Their other five films consist of the moderately successful Robots and Horton Hears a Who!, but they’re best known for the Ice Age series. Those three films got a lukewarm response from the critics but were huge hits grossing an astonishing 1.92 billion dollars between them at the Box Office. Though all three films were solid hits at the US box office, it was noticeable that they really raked in the money in the world-wide market taking 70% of their total gross outside America.
With Rio, Blue Sky are obviously trying to recapture that world-wide appeal, with a film that’s set in Rio de Janeiro. The film begins there as we see a young, nervous macaw called Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) being traumatised as he’s captured by smugglers before he can learn to fly. He grows up in Minnesota in the United States, where he’s cared for by Linda (Leslie Mann). Being of a nervous disposition, Blu is quite happy with his sheltered existence in a quiet bookshop.
This is interrupted when a Brazilian bird scientist called Tulio (Rodrigo Santuro) arrives in town. He tells Linda that Blu is one of the last of his breed and they face extinction unless he is brought to Rio to mate with a female blue macaw. Linda is reluctant but eventually agrees and they all head off to Brazil together. However things don’t go the plan when Blu meets Jewel (Anne Hathaway), as they don’t hit it off. Jewel is a jungle bird who longs for freedom and she looks down on Blu for being happy to be a pet.
Things take a turn for the worse though when both birds are stolen from their cages by smugglers with the aid of an evil cockatoo called Nigel (Jemaine Clement). They are tethered together but they manage to escape from the smugglers. However as Blu can’t fly they are forced to make their way back on foot to Linda, who’s frantically looking for them. The pair are helped on their journey by a toucan (George Lopez), a canary (Jamie Foxx) and a bulldog (Tracey Morgan).
As a piece of broad entertainment this is perfectly decent stuff. It’s not remotely in the league of masterpiece animation like Toy Story, but there’s enough laughs to keep both adults and children happy.
The voice cast is not bad. Eisenberg brings his now customary nerdish charm to the character of Blu but Hathaway doesn’t really do a whole lot with Jewel. Jamie Foxx is good but doesn’t really feature too much but Tracy Morgan (from 30 Rock) gets a few laughs as a bulldog with saliva issues. The star of the show though is Jemaine Clement (one half of Flight of the Conchords) as the villainous Nigel. He has great fun as the evil cockatoo and is far and away the most memorable thing about the whole project. The worst thing by far is the ridiculously named rapper will.i.am from the terminally irritating pop group The Black Eyed Peas. Thankfully, he’s only in a few scenes.
Once again the 3-D effects are a disappointment, succeeding only in making things dark and frankly, hard to see at times. The action moves along quickly though and overall this is a satisfying piece of family entertainment that should be another big hit for Blue Sky Studios.
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Jim O’Connor |
