Certificate (UK) – U
Country – USA
Runtime – 96 mins
Director – Carlos Saldanha
Starring – Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Jemaine Clement, Leslie Mann, Tracy Morgan, George Lopez, Will.i.am, Jamie Foxx, Rodrigo Santoro
The latest 3D animation from the creators of the Ice Age franchise is a colourful and energetic movie that provides perfect entertainment for the entire family after the more grown-up pleasures of the recent Rango.
Rio tells the story of Blu (Eisenberg), a rare macaw who is stolen from his nest as a chick and ends up in the snowy Minnesota town of Moose Lake. He is raised and cared for by Linda (Mann) and lives a life of domesticated luxury in her bookshop. Then they receive a visit from Tulio (Santoro), a bird expert from Brazil who tells them they must travel with him to Rio so that they can introduce Blu to the only remaining female of his kind, Jewel (Hathaway). Arriving in Rio, Blu and Jewel are soon stolen by bird smugglers intent on selling them on to the highest bidder. They soon escape but they have one small problem. Blu has never learned to fly. He must overcome his fear of the skies with the help of Jewel, a wise Toucan called Rafael (Lopez), two wisecracking birds Pedro and Nico (Will.i.am and Foxx) and Luiz (Morgan) a slobbering Bulldog, if they are going to keep one step ahead of the bad guys and their evil cockatoo Nigel (Clement) and make it back to Linda and Tulio alive.
Rio, despite an occasionally annoying ad campaign, actually turns out to be entertaining if slightly superficial fun. The animation is bright, colourful and detailed, a far cry from the occasionally flat and unattractive look of the Ice Age series. One downside of the 3D version is that some of those bright colours are inevitably muted, due to the glasses. The 3D itself is very similar to that in most animated films these days, occasionally effective, often not. It works best in the action sequences, a flight over Rio with the aid of a hang-glider, an escape over the roof tops of the favelas, or a motorbike ride through it’s narrow streets and alleyways all of which are very exciting. Though they’d probably be just as impressive without the added dimension.
The story itself is slight and functional but the script is often very funny and gets a decent amount of laughs out of the contrast between the domesticated Blu and the more street-smart inhabitants of Brazil. Yes the idea of buttoned-down, repressed Americans (Linda also has a similar journey to make) learning to embrace the fun side of life in the more open and care-free continent of South America is hardly original, but it’s lightly done and the message of learning to live with your heart and not your head isn’t overstated too much. The film also manages to get away with more dancing bird/animal scenes than is usually possible due to the setting of Rio during Carnivale.
The voice over work is very strong. Jesse Eisenberg’s anxious and nervous shtick proves to be just as charming in the form of an animated bird as it is in live action. Anne Hathaway is strong and fiesty (though why they got an American actress to play a Brazilian bird is a slight mystery). There’s also good support from Will.i.am, Jamie Foxx and Tracy Morgan as the more comedic characters, who are actually less annoying than expected. It’s a shame though that both Wanda Sykes and Jane Lynch are wasted as a pair of Canadian Geese back in Moose Lake. Best of all however is Jemaine Clement as the bad guy’s evil cockatoo Nigel. Flight of the Conchords fans will be glad to hear that he got to co-write and sing his own song ‘Pretty Bird’ (sample lyric ‘Like an abandoned school I have no principals/principles’), he also delivers one of my favourite lines of the film spoken to a bunch of pick-pocketing monkeys (I’m not interested in your nicked Knick-knacks. Your burgled baubles bore me.
Overall Rio may lack the depth and detail of Pixar or the more recent Rango in terms of script and animation but it’s a very enjoyable and spirited movie in it’s own right, and should entertain both adults and kids. A word of advice to those not entirely sold on 3D though, seek out the 2D version. It will be cheaper and the glorious colours will be far brighter.
Review film Rango
Rango has the feel of a lark, of a film-lover's spree in a playpen equipped with some of the world's most expensive and expressive toys. Verbinski also enjoys the advantage of some highly gifted playmates, including technical wizards at Industrial Light + Magic (working on the firm's first animated feature), some of his Pirates effects cohorts and visual consultant Roger Deakins, who helps make the picture look as much shot as animated.
Unquestionably the first kids' toon to feature a homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas within the first 10 minutes, Rango pivots on the pilgrim's progress of a mild-mannered pet chameleon who finds greatness thrust upon him when he pretends to a past of accomplished gunslinging in the name of justice. In the process, he becomes sheriff of the dried-up desert town of Dirt, which is presided over by a fat, old tortoise who controls the ragged community's water supply, a situation that neatly allows the film to accommodate a child-friendly ecological theme while, for buffs, also summoning strong memories of Chinatown.
That Rango has something different in mind from the general run of animated features is clear in the preliminary philosophical banter between Rango (Depp), a bulging-eyed chameleon who's normally blue, and a Don Quixote-like armadillo (Alfred Molina) whose midsection has been flattened by a truck's wheel. The compositions, especially in this stretch, are imaginatively bizarre, as are Rango's free-associative musings, some of which go by so fast that it's hard to take them all in.
Ushered on his way through the arid landscapes by a mordant mariachi owl band, Rango encounters female lizard Beans (Isla Fisher), with whom he stumbles upon the aptly named town of Dirt, which is occupied by a wide range of vividly realized critters who share one thing in common: They're all thirsty and can't hold out much longer without water. The wheelchair-bound, seemingly genial old tortoise mayor, who is voiced by Ned Beatty and looks like him too, promises everyone that good times lie ahead and attempts to co-opt Rango, who furthers his invented legend by killing a giant, metal-beaked hawk, by appointing him sheriff.
While some distracting sideline villainy triggers some busy chases and battles, the real bad guy is the mayor, who has been hoarding water in preparation for the day when he will have bought up all the surrounding land for cheap. His henchman is the giant Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), memorably equipped with a rapid-fire Gatling gun where his rattle normally would be. But before Rango faces his high noon with the serpent, he has an inspiring encounter with an iconic character called the Spirit of the West who bears an uncanny resemblance to an aged Man With No Name.
When filmmakers who have never before worked in animation jump into the deep end, the result could range from the freshly innovative to the downright clueless. In this case, it's happily the former that prevails. Screenwriter John Logan, working from a story cooked up with Verbinski and the latter's longtime illustrator and conceptual consultant James Ward Byrkit, stirs the pot of genre archetypes, conventions and cliches with a sharp eye for their amusing reusability while also writing flavorsome character dialogue.
For his part, the director has broken with convention by recording the vocal performances, not separately in the isolation of studio booths but with the actors working together on a prop-laden and partly dressed stage for 23 days, during which time their work was shot by HD cameras so that animators could later reference their facial expressions and bodily gestures for inspiration. There is evidence of this working more with some actors -- particularly Depp and Beatty -- than others, but the verbal exchanges do spark and flow in the manner of accomplished ensemble work; in the promotional materials, the filmmakers call the technique "emotion capture," as opposed to motion capture.
But most exceptional is the visual style, which makes even the best animated 3D look like a poor cousin. More than in any other animated work that comes to mind, meticulous attention has been paid to light and shadow, to gradations of color, to details of faces, costumes and props and to the framing of shots. Some of this is deliberately meant to ape the density of the compositions in certain classic Westerns and, even more, to those of Italian master Sergio Leone. Beyond this, it's arresting to behold the twists the filmmakers add, such as creating a Monument Valley-like backdrop but deliberately changing its color from reddish to a sandy yellow or reducing the town in spots to what could be called its skeleton.
Such imaginative leaps are perpetuated by Hans Zimmer's score, which reworks the sound of Ennio Morricone's celebrated scores for Leone in ways that are exciting, sometimes comic but never silly.
A few off-color dialogue exchanges are mildly surprising for a family-friendly, PG-rated film, and dropping an additional five minutes or so would have tightened the screws to its benefit.
