Whyboy Spotlights… Rio

Blue Sky Studios, a production company that has made some of the most beautiful and recognized animated films; like Ice Age, Epic, and Horton Hears a Who. However in terms of their actual entertainment quality they’ve ranged from great to garbage material. There has been a lot of animated movies through the years that have came and went without any sort of noise made about them. It happened with the Babe Ruth talking bat film Everyone’s Hero, it happened with Disney’s Meet The Robinsons and now we have Blue Sky’s latest movie series attempt Rio.

 

Ignoring the fact that Rio has whored itself out so many times (most famously in Angry Birds) you’d probably see it begging for pennies next to the 7/11, I never heard much about Rio, good or bad. Sure there were whispers about the animation looking fantastic but other then that Rio just faded from public consciousness until Blue Sky attached jumper cables to it and revived this dead horse and made Rio 2. But does it really have the capacity to become a sequel-spewing monster like Ice Age or Alpha & Omega? Well if the masses want it, sure, but let’s figure out my personal opinion.

 

Our story stars a domesticated blue macaw named Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) who lives a very happy modern life with his quicky bookwork owner Linda Gunderson (Leslie Mann) in Minnesota. Why be that specific? This movie has quite the respect for Minnesota so a lot of jokes are made out to make it the quirkiest but lamest place to live. Being Canadian these jokes… weren’t jokes to me but maybe somebody from Minnesota can get a laugh out of “Cheese and Sprinkles.” Anyway, quirky levels go up a notch as bird specialist and scientist Túlio Monteiro (Rodrigo Santoro) comes across Blu and tells Linda that he is among the last of his species, proposing that he can take the two all the way to Rio to hook him up with the female Blue Macaw they found.

Linda reluctantly agrees and Blue meets the bland love interest Jewel (Anne Hathaway) but tragedy strikes as thanks to a Sulphur-crested Cockatoo named Nigel (Jemaine Clements) turns out to be EVIL and gets Blue and Jewel stolen by three forgettable smugglers and a street orphan with a heart of gold. Through a very well animated chase scene, Blue and Jewel are strapped together via a chain and must make their way across Rio to find a way to free themselves. Will these two birds of a feather stay together?

I’ll just lay it flat out there are only three things that I thought were well done in this movie, everything else was middle of the road. Nothing terrible, except for a black eyed pea and a fox stinking up the humour in this movie making it HIP! But we’ll get to that soon enough. Let’s really start with the story and how these characters relate to the thematic message. Blu is a neurotic flightless and overly cautious dork and Jewel is… supposed to be his exact opposite but I never got any sort of character from Jewel. If we had a really diametric relationship then Jewel should be completely wild, rash, and somewhat self absorbed as Blu would be the introvert, always cautious about acting wild, and Jewel would be able to show him how to be wild and free. That’s what I would suggest if I were this movie’s story editor.

What we got is a “personality” version of the “I’m Rubber. You’re Glue” variety. Everything Blu says Jewel is against it or can’t comprehend how he can think that way. It gets really tedious, and I was just counting down the seconds until we would get the inevitable tragic back story where Jewel would pour her heart out showing that deep within the heart of ice is just a tiny flower that just needs love to be nurtured. That would be predictable, but it be character development. Too bad the movie forgot about that, mostly focusing on Blue’s end of the relationship, leaving Jewel a shallow emotional tool for the story. Complete with traditional kidnapping by the villain. Blu is an actual character with emotions, who takes action and inaction, and could be a really good romantic foil. It’s just too bad he was partnered with the blandest partner possible.

 

Speaking of partners, it’s time to introduce you to Rio’s line up of comic reliefs; the hippest birds on the block will.i.am and Jamie Foxx, the contractually obligated George Lopez toucan, and a slobbering pit ball version of Tracy Morgan. Four wonderfully varied comic reliefs and only two bring actual relief, while the other two might have done the same if they were put in a fire during the movie. Tracy Morgan’s character has just the slobbering gimmick, his drool gets everywhere, people slip on it and you can almost sense the writer wanted to put in a laugh track. He’s really just here to act as the goal for our blue birds, which isn’t bad per-say. He fulfills his role and for that he can pass with a passing C. Will.i.am and Jamie Foxx on the other hand are the HIP characters, the one’s who are thrown into the trailers to show you the movie is KEWL. Every scene with them is just eye rolling “hilarity.”

 

Oddly enough George Lopez’s character actually serves more of a purpose then just comic relief. He serves as a projection of Blu and Jewel’s relationship. Our first scene with George has us meeting his chaotic family and his lovely wife. On the surface this could be just considered filler to have more zany comedy, but afterwards George played as Blu’s experience mentor or a conscience so to speak. Most of their scenes showed George trying to get Blu to win over Jewel as well as be more daring. This is more intriguing on a story level as we have a clear mentor character who pulls double duty as comic relief. No black eyed peas necessary.

 

Glossing over all the human characters with a big fat “MEH” I’m getting right to one of the best parts of Rio, Jemaine Clement’s as Nigel. In a much better comedy he could’ve been one of the greats. Jemaine just owns the role of this psychotic cockatoo, bringing on one side an air of dignity and shakespearian wit but then cackling insanely like a hyena. He’s also a perfect foil to Blue as the always self-conscious blu goes up against the completely self absorbed Nigel. Plus his villain song was pretty decent, with cover visuals, funny lyrics, and Jemaine Clement’s voice was able to be both creepily soothing and darkly over-exaggerated. Nigel alone made this movie not a waste of time to watch for me.

 

Now the only other major thing that this movie got right was… wait for it… it’s a real shocker… the visuals. Blue Sky pulls out all the stops by bringing us some of the most colourful and expressive animation in a long time. The motion and lighting especially in the musical sections are among some of the most vibrant and exciting I’ve ever seen. The animation made songs that honestly aren’t too memorable and made them visually memorable. Although saying that, good visuals do not make up for a really just meh, average, middle of the road story and characters. I can’t say this is a bad movie by a long shot, but it has the stench of “exec” design (adding will.i.am) so that the film could appeal to a broader market and the romance is just under developed. I think Rio is good for a watch if you’re interested in becoming an animator so that you can see a great example of colour and movement and for a normal viewing audience its completely harmless and you’ll quickly forget watching the movie as soon as the DVD stops.

Written By: Taylor “Whyboy” Wyatt