Rio (2011)

As the animation food chain stands, I had 20th Century Fox Animation down low on the list, right above Sony Pictures Animation, which I hated. Then Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came out. I love that movie to death. So then Fox was triumphed by Sony. Now, there are no movies by Fox Animation that I hate. But I never have really loved any of them. Ice Age was decent, Ice Age: The Meltdown was a bit better, and Robots was decently bad. Now, I never bothered to see Ica Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (which I have an ever-long beef with since whenever I would try to record George A. Romero’s classic Dawn of the Dead on TV, when I searched it on the DVR, that would always come up, and never Dawn of the Dead [well, sometimes maybe the Zack Snyder version, but if I cared about Zack Snyder movies, I would have given Sucker Punch a positive review], only Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs), but I have not heard the kindest things. And then there was Rio. Rio is a movie that actually makes me care about 20th Century Fox Animation. And movies rarely give me hope about companies that I had no hope for. The last time this happened was probably Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. And while Rio is definitely not as good as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, it still is a very good film. The movie is extremely colorful, cheery, sweet, and fun. With an all-star voice cast including Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, George Lopez, will.i.am, Jamie Foxx, Tracy Morgan, Leslie Mann, and more. Eisenberg voices a male blue macaw (appropriately named Blu), who is probably the single last male of his kind. So he is flown out to Rio De Janeiro, where he is set to breed with the only known female of the species, Jewel (voice of Anne Hathaway). To say the least, these two do not get along very well. Which does not bode well for them when they get kidnapped by criminals who are trying to sell them. So they attempt to escape, which would work fine, except for two reasons-1, Blu and Jewel are chained together, and-2, Blu can’t fly. What happens after is a slew of colors, music, humor, and story, all thrown together to make a definitely unique film. It’s obvious that this movie is marketed towards little children. The film was edited and re-rated to a G after getting a PG rating from the evil MPAA. So the studio knows that they want a movie young children are going to watch. And the film definitely knows it. The movie’s plot and story are probably the weakest link of the movie. The movie stretches it out extremely. Rio could have been an hour and ten minutes long, and been a much tighter and better film. But we couldn’t do that, because we need a lot of really hip dance music numbers, right? Wrong. The music in the film just kind of is there to keep the kids happy. It’s not that music wouldn’t be good in this film, Rio just screams music. It just needs to be good music (and a movie called Rio that doesn’t have a Duran Duran song in it gets a bad mark in my book), and it’s not here. But the visuals for the music is probably the best visuals for a movie I’ve seen in a while. It’s definitely the best animation I’ve seen since Rango, and that goes for the entire film. I watched the movie at home on Blu-ray, not in the theaters, so I can’t vouch for the 3-D, or the big screen feel. But watching it with perfect picture, the movie kind of blew me away. It was amazing. The movie is extremely fun, don’t get me wrong. There are a few jokes in here where I was laughing hard. And the film’s heart is in the right place, and when you get down to the bare minimum of it all, that’s all a movie really needs.
8/10