Directed by Carlos Saldanha, (3.5/5).
I opened the heavy door to the room where the sound of the commercial world was coming from. I then edged my way past rows of velvet red seats. Once I sat down, I realised there were three people in front of me. It looked like a mother with curly blonde hair sitting in between her two children. There was no one else in the room. The idea of a mother sneaking her children out of school on a Friday afternoon to watch a film is like sipping hot tea in bed when it’s raining outside. It’s lovely. I guess Rio was a suitable compliment to this charming scene.
Rio follows the story of an awkward (and rare) Spix’s Macaw (Jesse Eisenberg) who was abducted from the Rio forest but “fell off the truck” and ended up in the loving and obsessive hands of a granny-glasses-wearing child. They grow up together and run a bookstore in Moose Lake, Minnesota. They end up in Rio de Janeiro because the domesticated Spix Macaw has to mate with the wild female Macaw (Anne Hathaway) in order to save their species from extinction. There are poachers and orphan kids, transvestites and dentist-by-day-hooker-by-night characters that teach us a LOT about Rio. The kids wouldn’t understand.
The absolute best aspect of Rio was that Jemaine Clement was the voice actor for ex-show bird Nigel, the evil cockatoo. It was a through-and-through Jemaine character with delicious lines (and even a semi-FOTC song number). I wish the film had been about Nigel.
The movie crew behind Rio really haven’t advanced far from when they made Ice Age. Rio follows a similar story of terrible one-liners (the ones kids LOVE), utopic societal morals, gangster rap by married-with-kids men and those cringe-inducing happy endings, but that is EXACTLY what a family film needs. The super alternatives who smoke cigarettes in huddled circles (looking like sticks on fire) discussing Plato probably would pretend to hate it, but we’ve all gone to this type of film and walked out smiling. Then we’d go get ice-cream.
Rio
