Rio Review

Rio is a pretty solid animated film.  It's nothing special but it is not bad either.  It just pains me that not all animated films strive for the excellence that Pixar strives for (although I have not seen Cars 2 yet).

Rio follows Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) attempts to find his way home after being taken by black market dealers.  Along the way he tries to woo the only other female of his species, Jewel (Anne Hathaway).

I should probably start off with the bad and say that the story the film tells is kind of bad and definitely boring.  The story hits every familiar note (two characters of the opposite sex that start off as enemies, fall in love...the main character has to choose between two people at the end before finding a way to have both...the bad guys lose....the list could go on and on).  While I do applaud the fact that the film uses original songs during the course of its runtime, that is almost becoming a cliche for animated films.  That becomes especially apparent when the songs don't wow the audience which is the case in this film.

The film definitely isn't all bad though.  The voice work on this film is outstanding.  Jesse Eisenberg is the perfect choice for the bird that is always unsure of himself (which Blu is).  Anne Hathaway is always great and here she makes you forget she is just doing the voicework of your typical love interest.  Leslie Mann also does a voice performance that rises above the rest of the supporting cast.  However, the best work in the film comes from Jemaine Clement as the villain.  You would never picture him being able to voice a character such as this, but he not only does that, he steals the show.

One final thing that I would like to point out is that I saw this film in 2D.  From the look of it, however, it would probably have been one of the better films in 3D.  The field of depth looked to be amazing from what I could tell in 2D.

7/10