Rio

Rio, or Rio de Janeiro, is the beautiful capital city of the country of Brazil which is filled with energetic samba music (creating the genre of bossa nova), wildly appealing and natural landscapes and beaches, has a rich culture that feels very inviting and full of intriguing history, and a lot of colorful and unique fauna and flora that are sadly in danger of becoming extinct. With the right amount of time and effort, a sizable movie could’ve been made taking advantage of this uniquely pristine location and shown it off in the best way possible. However, when the studio in question is Blue Sky Studios, the animation company responsible for movies such as Dr Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who, Epic and the entirety of Ice Age franchise, that promise and potential drops as quickly as a flightless bird. Within the city of Minnesota, a blue Spix’s macaw named Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) is a domesticated pet to his owner and best friend, Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann) and enjoys his easy casual lifestyle, but both he and Linda soon learn from Ornithologist Túlio Monteiro (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro) that he may be the last male of his kind and they have to journey to Rio so Blu can mate with the last female blue macaw they have in captivity, Jewel (voiced by Anne Hathaway). Once placed together and learning that Angel once nothing to do with Blu and tries to escape, the two end up getting bird-napped by smugglers and are chained together in order to be sold off to the highest bidder. Literally being clipped due to Blu’s inability to fly, the two macaws struggle with being forced together and are stuck trying to flee from their captives on foot, needing the help of fellow birds in the area, including a toucan named Rafael (voiced by George Lopez), music-loving duo Pedro and Nico (voiced by will.i.am and Jamie Foxx) and a bulldog named Luiz (voiced by Tracy Morgan) to get back to Linda. Stuck together literally and figuratively and having to contend with being constantly chased by a psychotic Cockatoo named Nigel (voiced by Jemaine Clement), the two lovebirds have to work together in order to get unstuck from the other and return to their preferred way of life. While doing critically better than many other Blue Sky Studio films and did manage to be a commercial success (even getting nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song), Rio is dull, uninteresting, and very unfunny. While the movie has some nice elements to keep children engaged and it definitely isn’t the worst thing that kids could be subjected to watch, it doesn’t do itself many favors and needed stronger elements to defend itself with.

The story itself created by Todd Jones, Early Richey Jones, and director Carlos Saldanha, doesn’t go down an obvious environmentally-aware direction that a story like this could obviously take (especially given its focus on a real breed of bird that is sadly at risk of being extinct) and it thankfully doesn’t contain the usual expected tropes and cliches that come with that framework, as it at the very least follows its own beat with a narrative that is character-centric and actively uses its environment to enhance the visuals, personality and experience of the story rather than feel pressured and hinder by them. With that said though, the plot itself is also very uneventful and boring, featuring next to nothing risking or different throughout its entire minimal running time, which leaves the audience very little to be invested in. It tries to be a road trip movie, but the characters are too simplistic, and the conflicts are so one-dimensional and not properly explored and dissected that it can’t get into any meaty drama when the bottom line is without danger. A movie like this arguably doesn’t need anything drastically fresh or different if it just wants to be some cutesy fluff piece with pretty animals and colors, but if it was going to do that, it could’ve at least tried a bit hard with some of its essential elements to prevent such a stale experience. It’s largely just slow and dull, with not much in between that would leave a memorable impression on anyone, even kids. With that said, what it lacks in engagement, it makes up for in atmosphere. There is this safe, albeit charming element to this film that doesn’t really come the characters, dialogue, or situations, but just in the environment and how its presented. Carlos Saldanha is of Brazilian heritage himself, so he is able to flawlessly capture the spirit, look and feel of Rio without it feeling forced in or even needing time to properly explain it, rather allowing the audience to experience and feel it personally. While he could’ve led the film in a better manner and his past track record of directing all three previous Ice Age films isn’t helping his case, it (much like those films) is moreso just a little aimless and annoying rather than actively bad and does at least containing a few moments of reprieve and quiet that make it not feel entirely mindless.

The characters suffer from stale writing and bland characterization that none seem to stand out as anything other than voices done by famous celebrities (which is a common problem for most Blue Sky Studio films). Blu as a lead along with Jewel are not very engaging leads and they don’t share much chemistry between each other, despite the fact that you can hear both Jessie Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway trying. Hathaway as an overall performance is honestly not too bad, but her role does feel a little too one-note and it prevents her from really feeling like a proper character, whilst in comparison, Eisenberg can become a little grating from his character’s whiny and overly neurotic persona, yet it still feels like he’s putting in effort. Both Leslie Mann and Rodrigo Santoro are pretty bland and most of them surrounding them and the human characters is pretty useless and annoying throughout the entire film (involving the human smugglers who just come across as one-note cartoons), George Lopez is just doing his usual shtick and routine, just in the form of a toucan, Jamie Foxx and will.i.am essentially just play the same character in two different birds (there is practically no different between either of them outside of their designs) and the most of the side characters are played a little too goofy and over-the-top to not become annoying the more screen time they get. While they aren’t the worst cast of characters to be stuck with as they are harmless enough and their jokes aren’t offensively annoying, they don’t really stand out. The only one who does manage to leave a memorable impressive is Jemaine Clement as the character of Nigel, having a pretty good delivery that can come off as both funny and threatening, but even he suffers from a very unfunny script and very strange direction. The idea of a deformed cannibalistic cockatoo may sound threatening, but the acting, personality type and even several scenes seem to push him towards being a more humorous foil despite their being room for this to just be a straight-faced threat (he gets a full-fledged musical number that is honestly just a little surreal), but the movie always pushes how scary and threatening he is even though it’s never really felt, so the two elements don’t mesh well together.

One of the key issue this film has to struggle with is the soulfully unfunny script, with this one written by Don Rhymer, Joshua Sternin, Jennifer Ventimilia, and Sam Harper, not shaking that boat in any way. The movie never gets a genuine laugh out of a line and can only muster a passable chuckle through a few line deliveries and an occasional good execution (when the funniest moment involves characters being unexpectedly in a cage, that is saying something). To make this kind of story work, it either needs very engaging characters (which it doesn’t have) or a very likeable entertaining sense of humor (which this film also doesn’t have), so it has a lot of uphill climbing to do. It almost doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be that funny as whenever it presents a situation that feels like it’s supposed to be a joke, it doesn’t even have a set-up or punchline, just a large gap of silence from the audience to confusedly wonder over. But with that said, another familiar element of Blue Sky Studio movies is that despite the quality of their stories, they do always make some very nice-looking films, and this one has an even nicer location to focus on. Coming back to the real-life influence, the movie has some very rich environment colors and landscape shots that truly feel like being in the city of Rio.  The clear color palette that is just bursting with vibrancy and life, the variety of animals that feel wonderfully tropical, the very plant-based and stone-building environments that presents a location that feels very rural in nature but still majestic in a sense, the attitude and energy of the people which are friendly and very chill but also a little crazy in many ways, it truly feels like a different location from traditional animated movies and really likes its set in a different part of the world (despite how few people actually speak Brazilian in this film). There are some beautiful overview shots of the city shot in a 360-style done by cinematographer Renato Falcão that almost feels realistic, and while the human designs can look pretty weird and a little overly cartoonish in points with their exaggerated features, all the animals have very sharp bright colors and very definable expressions and designs. The music composed by John Powell and Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes also sounds appropriately Brazilian in terms of instrumental and its choices of samba-style songs. It doesn’t quite go far enough to have memorable lyrics, but it doesn’t feel like a pop song thrown in to sell a soundtrack for the most part. The opening and closing numbers actually have some good instrumentals and vocals around it that really provides that needed party vibe that this film really thrives on, and Real in Rio has a great beat tied to it and sounds legitimately pretty great (which is fitting considering it was nominated for an Oscar). It isn’t all perfect though as the villain song is pretty stupid, very forgettable and features some really stupid lyrics, and there is an occasional song that feels like a radio song more than anything.

Rio does take place in a unique location and had its heart in the right place in showing awareness in the declining number of birds in the Brazilian rain forest without going to forceful on its message, but the attached movie comes with a flock of problems. The plot is boring and lacks involvement, the characters are bland, the writing is very sloppy, and it results in a highly forgettable movie, outside of its aesthetic elements. Everything surrounding the location in terms of visuals, atmosphere, music, all of that is given a truly genuine treatment and has some great stuff surrounding those aspects, it just needed to give as much love and focus on the other elements in order to make this work, which as previously stated aren’t terrible, just not that good. While not awful and would be able to entertain a child mindlessly for a while, this movie isn’t worth a pile of bird feed.