The devil is in the details.
If you are going to make an animated movie, chances are its set in a futuristic, mythic or nonspecific location. It could be set in the wilderness, or possibly in a very small setting which happens to a microcosm for the universe that the main characters live in. One thing's for sure: if you are going to incoroporate a specific, modern-day, REAL location into your movie, you'd better make sure that it is as real a depiction as possible, with as much TLC given to the niggling details as it is conceivable to to create with animation. Ratatouille did exactly this for Paris, and I'm happy to say that Rio did this for Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
There's no other way to say it: the Brazil portrayed in Rio is simply gorgeous. And if you see it in 3D (which you definitely should), you may come away from the experience as having taken a brief vacation there. That is how rich the visual representations are.
Of course, a setting is nothing without a story, and the story in Rio is very good too. It tells the story of Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), one of a rare species of blue macaw who is kidnapped as a baby by poachers and ends up falling off the back of a truck into the snowy streets of Moose Lake, Minnesota. Blu is fortunate enough to be taken in by Linda (Leslie Mann), a young girl who vows to take care of Blu, and the two become fast friends. Fifteen years later, Linda is running a bookstore, and she and Blu are inseparable, even though Blu is unable to fly.
Blu's existence eventually draws a visit from a noted ornithologist, who informs Linda that Blu is one of the last of his kind, and wants to take Blu to Brazil so he can mate with a female macaw named Jewel (Anne Hathaway) in order to propagate the species. Linda grudgingly agrees, but once Blu and Jewel are introduced, things don't exactly "take off", if you know what I mean. Their relationship is complicated even further then the pair are captured by animal smugglers and their henchman, an evil cockatoo named Nigel (Jermaine Clement).
Of course, if you're going to set a movie in Rio, you might as well have it take place during Carnival, right? This gives the animators an excuse to dazzle us with throngs of people in colorful costumes as well as a plethora of toe-tapping samba numbers, which are very engaging, even fun (though Nigel's autobiographic rap song is a little OTT).
Eisenberg and Hathaway are fine in their leading roles, and a supporting cast that includes George Lopez, Jamie Foxx and Will.I.Am is also very good. My only complaint is that, not for the first time, an animated movie's visuals often threaten to overwhelm whatever story it wants to tell. Rio's balance of story and visuals does lean more heavily towards the latter, but not as badly as in many other stories of this nature (and not nearly as well as Ratatouille, which remains unmatched). Still, for what it's worth, if there is one thing in this world that may make you want to immediately book a trip to Brazil, it's Rio (especially the 3D version), and that should probably count for something.
4/5 stars
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