With his latest animated adventure, director Carlos Saldanha gets to leave the Ice Age and return to his homeland of Brazil in Rio. And as you might expect, this colorful land provides for an animated adventure just as big as the prehistoric creatures from his previous movies.
Rio follows the story of Blu, thought to be the world’s last blue macaw, who is exported by villainous animal smugglers to the faraway land of Minnesota before he is even old enough to fly. There, he is raised by a bookstore owner, leading a comfortably domesticated life of hot chocolate and other pamperings with no recollection of his more exotic birthplace. Voiced in an appropriately dweeby manner by The Social Network‘s Jesse Eisenberg, Blu is transported back to Rio when a scientist shows up with news that there is also a surviving female blue macaw, hoping the two will hit it off and prevent the extinction of their species. 
Arriving in Rio de Janeiro just before the onset of Carnivale, Blu’s journey quickly becomes a Busby Berkeley-like jungle jaunt in which he and Jewel, the female blue macaw voiced by Anne Hathaway, evade capture by smugglers and scientists while traversing wild terrain and parade floats. The fact that Blu is a bit of an ugly duckling in Rio (even as an adult bird, he has still never learned to fly) definitely causes some complications. But with the help of a toucan voiced by George Lopez, a drooling bulldog voiced by Tracy Morgan, a cardinal voiced by will.i.am and a canary voiced by Jamie Foxx, Blu and Jewel are able to stay one step ahead of Nigel, a bitter cockatoo doing the smugglers’ dirty work alongside his gang of marmosets.
Like the Ice Age movies, Rio is silly enough to entertain kids, yet clever enough for adults to enjoy. And as a bonus, the movie is preceded by an Ice Age short called Scrat’s Continental Crack-Up, which is sort of sneak peek at next year’s Ice Age: Continental Drift.
Rio. Directed by Carlos Saldanha. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway and Leslie Mann. Rated G. www.rio-themovie.com.
Review by Jonathan Williams