In the three years since Rio, was anyone really clamoring for a follow-up? Yes, the movie made a bunch of money, but so did The Smurfs, and then that got a sequel that turned out to be terrible. So maybe it was within Rio’s destiny as an already-meh children’s movie that it would get a further-meh children’s movie sequel. Those are the laws of Hollywood, I guess.
So there it is: Rio 2 is not very good, and I say that as an adult who knows about being in love and being in a relationship, concepts that Rio 2 is surprisingly obsessed with given that it’s supposed to be a children’s movie, you know, for children. Not for parents with trust issues or identity crises, but kids. But we have a movie that focuses predominantly on the marriage of our main bird characters, Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (voiced by Anne Hathaway), and very little on their children, or on any other younger protagonists. It’s kind of strange, but the plot overall is a recycled save-the-forests thing, so maybe it’s not that surprising that nothing about this movie feels remarkable.
Here’s the gist: Some years ago, blue macaws Blu and Jewel, supposedly the last birds of their kind, fell in love, even though Blu used to be a pet and Jewel was once a wild animal. Despite their differences, they decide to start a new life together, and their former owners, Linda (voiced by Leslie Mann) and Tulio (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro), start a nature sanctuary together. Fast-forward to where Rio 2 picks up, with Blu and Jewel the parents of three tween birds; you won’t really catch their names, but there’s a chubby older girl attached to her music device, a nerdy younger girl with her beak in a book, and a mischievous boy who likes to blow things up. Blu and Jewel live on the nature sanctuary created by Linda and Tulio, who are married and still exploring the Amazon, trying to find more blue macaws in the jungle. Instead, they stumble upon illegal loggers, cutting down the rainforest for their own personal gain. Oh no!
Simultaneously, Blu and Jewel are also being stalked by the evil bird Nigel (voiced by Jemaine Clement), who Blu seriously injured during the first film; now unable to fly, Nigel wants his revenge. Along with a poisonous frog who is in love with him but can’t touch him because she’d kill him and a goofy anteater that serves as his main transportation, Nigel wants to inflict revenge on Blu, and if his family gets in the way, so be it.
While those plots are going on—loggers vs. Linda and Tulio, Nigel and Co. vs. Blu and Family—there’s also a third plot involving the appearance of hundreds of other blue macaws, who have been hiding in the rainforest from humans all this time. Among them are Jewel’s father Eduardo (Andy Garcia) and an old crush, Roberto (voiced by Bruno Mars), who are shocked at Blu’s human-like qualities, like needing a GPS to get around the jungle and a fondness for breath mints. Why wouldn’t Jewel and her children move to the jungle to be with their family? And if Blu doesn’t want to come along—well, Roberto could raise his children, and Eduardo doesn’t really want this pansy city bird as a son-in-law, anyway.
Oh, and at the same time, there’s ANOTHER side plot about the Carnival, as Blu’s other bird friends, Toucan Rafael (voiced by George Lopez), cardinal Pedro (voiced by will.i.am), and canary Nico (voiced by Jamie Foxx), try to find a bird or animal act that could suitably perform at the festival. So they come along to the jungle, too, thinking they could find a good “native” option that will add some local flair to the proceedings.
That’s a lot, right? That’s an overwhelming amount of sideplots for an animated movie that lasts only 101 minutes, and because the movie is so crammed and jumps so often from thing to thing, the characters don’t really move past what they already were in Rio. Blu is still too complacent, still too awkward; after years of marriage, why are he and Jewel still sparring over the most simple things? And Jewel seems incredibly selfish, forcing Blu to meet her demands regarding her family without ever acknowledging that for him, the human Linda is the closest thing he has to a mother. Bad-guy Nigel remains one-dimensional; the only good part of his storyline is evil frog Gabi (voiced by Kristin Chenoweth), whose operatic rendition of their tragic love story is one of the only humorous parts of this otherwise boring movie. And Blu and Jewel’s children, or his friends Rafael, Pedro, and Nico—they remain vehicles for one liners, nothing more.
The strength of Rio 2 should be its music and visuals, really, because its characters are so lackluster. But while Rio 2 is pretty enough visually—the colors of the various birds pop, the detail given to the rainforest is nice, and the Carnival scenes are very exciting—it doesn’t need its 3D effects, and there are no songs—aside from the one sung by Gabi, in which she laments that touching her love Nigel would kill him—that are memorable. Not one. Competition for “Let It Go,” this isn’t.
Perhaps the fact that Rio 2 is set in South America and voiced by a multicultural cast is in itself an accomplishment for a children’s film. But the ho-hum songs, the weirdly mature plot, the expected nature-is-good messaging—children’s movies are defined by their attention to detail and creation of relatable characters, and the lack of both in Rio 2 make it thoroughly mediocre.
Rating: 2 out of 5 Guttenbergs
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