It doesn't take four minutes for "Rio" to set itself apart from all the "Ice Age" movies the animators at Blue Sky made before it. Parrots, macaws, cockatoos and toucans sing and dance the samba in a flying delirium of color in a rainforest.
And then the poachers show up.
Comical, colorful, wonderfully cast and beautifully animated, "Rio" is the first Blue Sky movie that could be compared to the best of Pixar. It weighs weighty subjects with a light touch, embraces the music of the culture it visits and delivers delights like few cartoons this side of the Golden Age of Disney.
This is an adventure comedy about endangered species set to a rump-shaking beat.
Blu, given a witty, nervous nerdy voice by Jesse Eisenberg, was nabbed during the bird-napping expedition in the opening. He tumbles into the hands of little Linda, and they grow up in Moose Lake, Minn., devoted to each other.
Fifteen years later, a goofy scientist (Rodrigo Santoro) talks shy, homebody Linda (Leslie Mann) into bringing Blu to Rio de Janeiro. Blu is the last male cerulean blue macaw, and there's a female blue macaw who has to be his Miss Right. Of course, the spunky, jungle-savvy Jewel (Anne Hathaway) wants nothing from Blu but his help escaping. That's tricky, as he never learned how to fly. And he doesn't get her mania for freedom.
"I wouldn't expect a pet to understand," she hisses.
And then they're poached, again, by a gang of thieves with a wicked pet cockatoo (Jemaine Clement). The macaws will have to learn to work together. And they'll need the help of a friendly, henpecked toucan (George Lopez), a couple of streetwise, crooning/rapping songbirds (Jamie Foxx, will.i.am) and a daffy bulldog (Tracy Morgan) to pull this off.
All this happens during Carnival, Brazil's nationwide party of costumed parades, an orgy of glitter and song. The film showcases, in dazzling animated digital 3-D, the glories of Rio and this festival.
Native Brazilian director Carlos Saldanha might have earned his bones with those obscenely successful "Ice Age" movies, but give him a project close to his heart — he co-scripted this — and the movie just sings.
Literally. Sergio Mendes consulted on the music, and from the assorted sambas and insertion of "The Girl from Ipanema" to the bossa nova beat of other tunes — it shows.
There isn't a bad voice in the mix.
The songs don't compare with Disney's best, but "Rio" is still a delight, so much better than anything we've seen in animated form this year.
"Rio"
Our grade: B+
Genres: Comedy, Adventure, Animated
Running Time: 96 min
MPAA rating: G
Release Date: Apr 15, 2011
