Hi guys!
Last weekend we had an opportunity to go see the new Dreamworks Animation movie Rio at the theater. We didn’t see it in 3D simply because it wasn’t playing in 3D at the time we wanted to go. But good old 2D CGI animation works just as well in my book, so I can’t say I was disappointed.
Rio is about Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network and Zombieland), a blue macaw living in small-town Minnesota with bookstore owner Linda (Leslie Mann, Knocked Up and Funny People). When ornithologist Sylvio (Bernardo de Paula) comes from Rio de Janeiro and tells Linda that Blu is one of the last of his kind, he implores her to fly to Rio with Blu to see if Blu and the last known blue macaw female would be compatible and possibly keep the species alive.
Of course, when Linda and Blu get to Rio, things aren’t quite that cut and dried. When Blu meets Jewel (Anne Hathaway, Love and Other Drugs and Get Smart), sparks fly but not quite in the way Sylvia and Linda might have hoped. When a boy breaks into the facility to steal the rare macaws, Blu and Jewel have to work together to survive…
Honestly, this movie was cute and probably one of the better animated features from Dreamworks. I don’t think it quite has the emotional pull of the first Ice Age movie and doesn’t come close to Pixar’s Up or Wall-E, but it was fun. The addition of Jamie Foxx (The Soloist and Dreamgirls) and Will i Am (The Black Eyed Peas) as birds Nico and Pedro was fun as they sang many of the musical scenes in the film. And George Lopez (TV’s Lopez Tonight and the George Lopez show) as the toucan Rafael and Tracy Morgan (TV’s 30 Rock) as the slobbering dog Luiz added quite a bit of humor as well.
Beyond that, though the movie was very colorful and cute, I just don’t get the fascination. That said, I don’t know that it matters. The target audience was families and my wife and daughters loved the film. So I’ll count it as a partial success.
The animation was smooth and gorgeous, so that wasn’t my problem. And the characters seemed to have good chemistry together. I just wasn’t all that sucked in by the story I guess. It was very family friendly however and had a number of positive messages.
According to IMDb, it’s already made nearly $40 million domestically in its first week, so I would expect it to quickly earn a profit on its reported $90 million budget in the next few weeks domestically and abroad.
If you have kids, Rio is a fun way to spend an hour and a half at the movie theater together. Have fun and let me know what you think!
–Fitz
Related articles
- Review: ‘Rio’ Uses The Vibrant Colors of Brazil to Tell a Familiar But Lively Tale (filmschoolrejects.com)
- International Trailer for Rio Featuring Jesse Eisenberg (screencrave.com)
- ‘Rio’ Skewers ‘Scream 4’ At The Weekend Box-Office (moviesblog.mtv.com)
- Movie Review: Rio (2011) (blogcritics.org)
- Movie Review | ‘Rio’: Macaw Finds His Wings, and Much More, in Brazil (movies.nytimes.com)
- Rio Movie Review: 3-D Flick Soars (rightcelebrity.com)
- The Romance and Danger of ‘Rio’ (Review) (popmatters.com)
- MOVIE REVUE: Rio Bravo! (therogersrevue.wordpress.com)
