The most Brazilian animated movie ever made

Rating: 6/10 (21 June 2015)

But you could probably guessed that with the film's title. The writer and director Carlos Saldanha made this a nice feature about his home country. Topics like football, carnival and the rain forest are included, but there are also references to more serious aspects, such as orphan boys living in the slums of Rio or crime in general. Still as this is an animated feature and thus the target audience are mostly younger people, there is nothing too severe in here. The main character is a cookie-eating coffee-drinking blue macaw and we find out he is the one of only two specimen of his kind. The problem, however, is that he is so domesticated by his owner that he cannot even fly and so his trip to Brazil where he meets the other, a female (obviously) who is the exact opposite of him, is full of danger, adventure and a love story. Oh wait, there is actually another love story in there as his owner, a young woman, falls for a wildlife preservationist. The movie starts very nicely with "Real in Rio", the song that managed an Oscar nomination and made up for the film coming short in the Animated Feature category.
I quite enjoyed this movie. There are many funny scenes in it from start to finish and Blu and Jewel (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway) just like the two humans are quite a joy to watch. However, I have to say almost all other characters did not do too much for me and I believe this film could have been more essential and better without a couple of them. This way, it would probably not have been 100, but only 85 minutes, but I would have approved of that. There are some emotional moments, like when Blu and Jewel discover their love for one another or the two humans do in their macaw costumes, but as a whole it does not reach the emotional heights of Pixar movies. That is not to say it's a disappointing movie. It's lots of fun and the 7(!) people who worked on the script did a fine job all in all. Saldanha also directed the equally fun sequel from a year ago and I am curious if they will ever make a third movie. If yes, I will probably give it a watch. Until then, I recommend this first Rio movie of the franchise.