Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, George Lopez, Leslie Mann, Jemaine Clement, Tracy Morgan, will.I.am, Rodrigo Santoro, Jane Lynch and Jamie Foxx
Directed By: Carlos Saldanha
Screenplay By: Don Rhymer, Joshua Sternin, Jeffrey Ventimilia and Sam Harper
Story By: Carlos Saldanha, Earl Richey Jones and Todd Jones
Produced By: Bruce Anderson and John C. Donkin
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Rating: PG, for mild off color humor.
Running Time: Approximately 96 minutes
Website: rio-themovie.com
Budget: $90 million
Genre: Animated/Adventure/Comedy
Release Date: April 15, 2011
First things first: nobody does big-screen animated fare better than Pixar. They’re responsible for such modern-animated classics as Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up!, The Incredibles, and the Toy Story trilogy, among others.
Now, with the obligatory shout out to Pixar out of the way. Let’s talk shop about Rio, the new 3-D animated feature from Twentieth Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios, who were behind the Ice Age trilogy, Robots and Horton Hears A Who. Directed by Carlos Saldanha (who’s also credited with co-writing the film), Rio is anchored around a domesticated macaw named Blu (voiced by Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg) whose lived a comfortable existence in small-town Minnesota with his longtime owner Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann). Blu and Linda essentially grew up with one another – she a meek, bookish type; he a literate, hot chocolate connoisseur who can’t fly.
Blu and Linda’s quiet, predictable upper-Midwest life is interrupted one day when they are visited by Tulio (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro), a ornithologist from Brazil, who has identified Blu as the last surviving male of his species. The bird doctor wants to take Blu back to his native Brazil (from which he was kidnapped as an infant) and have him mate with Jewel (voiced by Oscar nominee Anne Hathaway), the last surviving female, in an effort to prevent the extinction of their species.
Of course things don’t go according to plan for the good doctor as Jewel wants nothing to do with Blu as she is a free spirit who flies to her own conga beat. The fact that Blu gives Woody Allen a run for his money in terms of neuroses doesn’t help matters much, neither does his inability to fly. All of this changes once Blu and Jewel must join forces when they are captured by smugglers who intend to sell them off at a handsome profit.
Rio de Janeiro is a picturesque setting for any film, even an animated one, and the filmmakers make the most of it here. They capture the vibrant, lush, intoxicating pulse of the city during Carnival, which one has to experience firsthand to fully appreciate. The music, courtesy of Brazilian music legend Sergio Mendes, also adds dimension and flavor to the film. Rio’s brightly-colored visual palette is truly eye-popping (without being needlessly flashy) and the 3-D utilized to tell the story feels organic, all of which helps to make the film more agreeable than it has any right to be. This, and the far superior Rango, are early-frontrunners for 2011’s most visually-intoxicating film.
The voice cast, however, is hit-and-miss. Hathaway is the clear standout. Having already collected an Emmy for her voice work on an episode of “The Simpsons” last year, Hathaway, big star that she is, delivers a full-bodied performance. Most other name actors, though, just phone in their roles – an easy paycheck, nothing more. This is especially true of Tracy Morgan and Jamie Foxx, the latter of whom is clearly capable of far better work. After all, Foxx didn‘t win that best actor Oscar for Ray by phoning it in.
Hathaway, however, sidesteps that and really invests a great deal of charm and moxie into Jewel. She’s well-matched with Eisenberg, who follows up his career-redefining performance in The Social Network with a charming nerd turn here. And Emmy nominee Jemaine Clement (HBO’s “Flight of the Conchords”) rather effectively chews the scenery as an evil cockatoo who assists the smugglers.
3 Stars
