Film
Rio
- Director
- Carlos Saldanha
- Certificate
- U
- Running Time
- 96 mins
This solid second-division effort from Ice Age/Robots director Carlos Saldanha recycles one of the half-dozen or so plots non-Pixar studios are seemingly restricted to by law: the domesticated beast who escapes into the wild and finds the inner strength to overcome a personal shortcoming, or some such guff. Hey – at least it isn’t the one about learning to be a better dad/son/cub. Its mercifully understated environmental message may be undone, however, by hordes of children demanding their own caged exotic birds.
https://youtu.be/-YlfY7sZqZ8
A well-cast Jesse (The Social Network) Eisenberg makes excellent use of his familiar dweeby screen persona as the voice of Blu, a flightless pet macaw living in snowy Minnesota with his bespectacled, spinsterish owner Linda (Leslie Mann), having been snatched from the wild as a fledgling by evil animal traffickers. Enter nerdy ornithologist Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro), who’s travelled all the way from Brazil to inform Linda that Blu is the last surviving male of his species and is now required back home to do the business with the last surviving female, Jewel (Natalie Portman), to prevent extinction. Needless to say, Jewel proves suitably disdainful of her neurotic suitor, especially when she learns he can’t fly and has no great enthusiasm for escaping. But here come those nasty poachers again to introduce an element of what our friend the censor calls “mild peril”. D’ya reckon Blu might finally rise to the occasion and overcome his fear of flying to save his prospective mate while acquiring a menagerie of comedy critter sidekicks along the way?
Even by Saldanha’s own standards, there are no characters as entertaining as Scrat here, and none of the colourful song’n’dance routines match the splendid vulture chorus of Food, Glorious Food in Ice Age 2. But this is enjoyable enough within its own comfort zone. Adult film references (Die Hard and, bizarrely, The Defiant Ones) are kept to a minimum and don’t interrupt the flow of the story, the city of Rio is vibrantly rendered if overly sanitised, there’s strong villainy from Jemaine (Flight of the Conchords) Clement as the voice of Nigel the dastardly cockatoo, and US comedian Tracy Morgan‘s slobbery bulldog Luiz steals each and every one of the few scenes he’s in.
Deckchair seating will be provided on a first come, first served basis for this We The Curious Big Screen event in Millennium Square, but you’re invited to bring along your own blankets/camping chairs/beanbags. Picnics are welcome too.
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