ANI-MOVIES, *Rio

As the first installment in their second and only other film franchise outside of Ice Age, Blue Sky Studios' Rio was a big enough hit for 20th Century Fox that they felt the need to give it a sequel three years later. The 2011 blockbuster was solo directed by Carlos Saldanha who previously shared the position on Ice Age and Robots. Saldahna first came out with the idea in 2005 about a penguin washing up in Rio de Janeiro, but rewrote it when two different animated movies about penguins came out from separate studios. The movie had four writers, which becomes obvious after you watch the entire movie because there are several different plots spinning around in a single 96-minute feature. Rio stars several celebrity actors simply because they were famous instead of well-established voice actors. The fully-CGI cartoon is a bright cheerful comedy romp, although it gives into a lot of various movie cliches like two characters getting cuffed together, and people just breaking into song considering this wasn't intended as a musical.

A baby blue parrot of the Spix's macaw variety is caught by poachers in Rio and finds his way to Minnesota where he is adopted by young Linda who grows up to be a lonely young woman running her own bookstore. The bird is named Blu is somehow tracked down by ornithologist Tulio who followed his trail all the way to Minnesota and tells Linda that Blu is the last known male of his species with a single female waiting for him back at a sanctuary in Rio. Linda agrees to take Blu there so he can mate with the female called Jewel. The couple barely get a chance to know each other when they are stolen from the aviary by the streetwise kid Fernando who took them for a small band of bird smugglers that are assisted by the wily cockatoo Nigel who is dastardly enough to have his own musical number. Linda and Tulio go searching for Blu as Fernando tries to help them find the parrots. Blu and Jewel meanwhile get to know each other as they are chained to each other which seriously brings Jewel down as Blu never learned to fly. They get help from various other birds throughout Rio but inevitably end up getting captured by the bird thieves again in a long chase that involves crashing a carnival parade and a drastic getaway on a shotty plane that all the birds escape from leaving Nigel getting grounded. Linda and Tulio eventually become a couple who open a bookstore in Rio where Blu and Jewel have three kids together as they live in the jungle.

Rio was a pleasurable enough watch, although it's hard for most adult watchers to get through it without the habitual need to add a new character every five minutes to the roster. Fox was so set on shoving so many stars into the cast that they forgot to leave in room for an engaging plot that doesn't just lead into one long chase sequence at the end. Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway portray the lovebirds pretty well, but the insistence of adding in pop culture favorites like George Lopez, Jamie Foxx, and Tracy Morgan begin to seriously weigh the enjoyment down. The animation is above conventional, but the concept of two should-be birds from different worlds getting together would have made for a better concept if this movie wasn't bent on stuffing the bill with more big celebrities. The one good thing this film produced is that the breed of bird it's based on has been freed from extinction.