What’s on now: Alternating betwixt The Office and Glee streaming on Netflix. Or at least trying to, since the wifi is spotty at best in here.
I don’t think it’s wrong for adults to watch kids’ movies from time to time, even if they’re not parents. Let’s face it, there are usually plenty of jokes in there for us, too. And sometimes it’s nice to just watch something cute and funny and light.
Rio tells the story of a blue macaw named Blu, voiced by The Social Network’s JesseEisenberg. See what they did there? Well, it could be worse. They could have left the e on there. It’s kind of like if they had simply named Simba “Lion” instead in The Lion King. Oh wait… they did.
Blu is caught by smugglers when he is just a little baby bird, quite possibly one of the cutest things I have ever seen. The bird, not the smuggling. He ends up in Moose Lake, Minnesota in the care of a little girl named Linda. He grows up with her as her best friend, and apparently only friend, since we are shown photographic evidence that the bird was her prom date. (Now that’s a whole new level of lonely, kids.) They grow up together and when she’s an adult, Linda runs her own bookstore. Because, you know, girls who like books all wear thick glasses, are socially inept, have no friends to speak of and bring pets to prom. It was like looking in the mirror for me.
One day, a Brazilian ornithologist (word of the day!) named Tulio, who happens to be just as socially inept as Linda, shows up and asks them both to come back to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with him. Turns out Blu is the last known male of his species, and Tulio wants to breed him with the last known female, which is in Brazil. Linda agrees and we’re off on our adventure.
Things really get going when Blu and Jewel (Anne Hathaway) are stolen from their intended love shack by smugglers. I’m sensing a pattern in Blu’s life here. From there, with the help of a handful of local birds and a fruit-hat-wearing bulldog named Luiz (yes, you read that correctly), the last two blue macaws in Rio have to work together to find their human friends and escape the smugglers and the criminally insane cockatoo in their employ (yes, you read that one right, too).
My personal favorite bit was the casting of Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement as the voice of Nigel, the aforementioned homicidal cockatoo. He’s one of those people that you probably have no idea who he is unless you know exactly who he is. Kind of like in Pirates of the Caribbean, where the Isla de Muerta can only be found by those who already know where it is. Sanity-shattering paradox aside, Clement was fun in the role, and even had a very Conchords-esque musical number. Come to think of it, I wonder if he wrote it… Excuse me while I consult my sources… … … He helped write it, yes. Cool.
Overall, I would say Rio was kind of cute. Certainly not the best animated flick I’ve seen most recently. That honor at the moment belongs to How to Train Your Dragon. But Rio has a few good points.
First off, the music is pretty good. One or two of the songs were toe-tappers, and will.i.am and Jamie Foxx even had small roles as two sidekick birds with their fair share of fun quirks. The animation was as good as it typically is these days, and I do admire whoever was responsible for making sure every feather was in place and moving properly. Sounds complicated to me anyway. For all I know, it takes one guy 10 minutes during post-production.
In all, it was okay. Kids might like it better than I did. But I’ll take that as a good thing.
Come to think of it... There should be an Angry Birds movie!
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, will.i.am, Jamie Foxx, Jemaine Clement, Tracy Morgan, George Lopez, Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro
Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
Rated G
2011
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