A Macaw Who Never Learned to Fly

Blu is a Spix’s macaw who has never flown. Raised in Moose Lake, Minnesota by a human named Linda, he lives a domesticated life until an ornithologist named Túlio Monteiro arrives with news: Blu is the last known male of his species, and a female named Jewel waits in Rio de Janeiro.

Trailer, via 20th Century Studios.

A Macaw Who Never Learned to Fly

That premise is the engine of Rio, directed by Carlos Saldanha and released in the United States on April 15, 2011. Jesse Eisenberg voices Blu; Anne Hathaway voices Jewel. The two clash immediately — she wants the wilderness, he wants a cage and a cracker. Then smugglers take them both.

The film’s best idea is Blu’s cage literacy. He escapes captivity not by flying but by knowing how cages work, and the smugglers’ legcuffs force the pair to travel on foot. It is a small, smart reversal of the usual animal-adventure math, where the hero’s gift is physical. Here the gift is institutional knowledge, and it buys exactly one scene before the movie reverts to a chase.

Nigel, Rafael, and a Mountain Blu Cannot Use

Jemaine Clement’s Nigel is the standout. A sulphur-crested cockatoo who works for the smuggler Marcel, Nigel explains his disdain for “pretty birds” by recalling that a parakeet replaced him on a television series. Clement plays the grievance as theatrical self-pity, and the character lands because the film lets him be genuinely menacing rather than merely vain.

The supporting cast is a tour of comic voices: George López as Rafael, a toco toucan; will.i.am as Pedro and Jamie Foxx as Nico, a cardinal and canary double act; Tracy Morgan as Luiz, the bulldog meant to remove the cuffs. Leslie Mann voices Linda, and Rodrigo Santoro voices Túlio. John Powell composed the score, and the music drew significant praise — deservedly, since it carries more personality than stretches of the middle act.

What the Middle Act Cannot Fix

Rafael tries to teach Blu to fly from the edge of a mountain. It fails. That failure is the film’s most honest scene and also its most frustrating, because Rio keeps setting up a lesson about fear and then declining to sit with it.

The tagline sells the theme: “1 out of every 8 Americans is afraid of flying. Most of them don’t have feathers.” It is a good joke and a promise the movie only half keeps. Blu’s fear gets a montage, not a reckoning, and the smuggling plot — Marcel wants to sell the birds on the black market — resolves with less weight than Nigel’s wounded ego.

Saldanha’s crew visited Rio de Janeiro and consulted a macaw expert at the Bronx Zoo to study the birds’ movements. That research shows in the animation, which finds real color in the city and real texture in the feathers. It shows less in the script, credited to Don Rhymer, Joshua Sternin, Jennifer Ventimilia, and Sam Harper, which keeps reaching for a theme about home and settling for a theme about getting home.

A 96-Minute Flight That Stays Level

Rio grossed $484 million against a $90 million budget, and it is easy to see the appeal: bright, fast, well-voiced, and never cruel. It is also never surprising. The premise about a bird who cannot fly deserves a movie willing to ground him longer.

KEY FACTS
– Release: April 15, 2011 (US); debut March 22, 2011, in Lagoa, Rio de Janeiro
– Runtime: 96 minutes
– Director: Carlos Saldanha
– Studio: Blue Sky Studios / 20th Century Fox Animation
– Composer: John Powell
– Metacritic: 60/100
– Gross: $484 million against a $90 million budget

Verdict: 6 of 10.

animated film · Blue Sky Studios · Carlos Saldanha · Jesse Eisenberg · movie review · Rio 2011