Much as I love Rio
de Janeiro , I was averse to Rio .
I didn’t like the trailer. I didn’t like the ugly design of the main birds, or
the rather whitewashed, Hollywood vision of Brazil
where everyone is a party animal and nobody is geeky or awkward.
Well, the birds are ugly and
this Brazil can
still be called somewhat whitewashed, there are geeky Brazilians here, and much
to recommend the film. Yes, probably I would have preferred the Pixar project
with the blue-footed newts that was cancelled when they realised their plot was
too similar to this one – and didn’t want to be the Dreamworks of Antz, Shark
Tale and the rest. But in its own right, Rio
has much to recommend it – not least of which being the awesome soundtrack.
This is a classic
fish-out-of-water romance, but with birds. Blue is a rare Blue Macaw – the last
male of his species. As a chick, he was taken from the Brazilian forest by
smugglers and was to be sold as a pet – but fell off the back of a truck and
was taken in by a nice geeky girl who runs a bookshop. When a Brazilian
scientist comes to whisk the two of them to Brazil to meet the last female of
the species, but smugglers once again get in the way, and the birds end up not
only chained together, but out in the wild with an evil cockatoo on their feathery tails.
Once again, though, just as
with Bolt the film doesn’t feel like it really has the capacity to move
the audience. Though the stakes are the future of a species, that never feels
like it’s in question. There’s no real sense of danger, nor of triumph. And the
way Blue having to learn to fly is signposted so heavily all through the film
just feels incredibly clumsy.
But there are a few scenes
that make the whole thing worthwhile – when the birds all burst into song and
Jewel has a solo verse, the way Carnaval itself is rendered, and some of the
shots of Rio .
But it certainly could have
been better – and more satisfying. And there’s something deeply amusing about
how they tried to render two birds with hooked beaks kissing.
No comments:
Post a Comment