What a disappointment...

Rating: 4/10 (25 April 2011)

Wow, this was such a disappointment, I felt really bad having convinced my partner to go to see it. The great part that earns the 4 stars is the animation of animals (not humans) Yes, they are cute, well drawn and animated, and all that jazz. But, yes, there is a huge BUT here, the plot, the dialog, the human "love" story... Well, they all fail to inspire any kind of emotion or imagination. On top of badly written, slow dialog, which is not helped much by the necessary comic elements, you have really badly written songs! Something like: "I fly like a bird, oh wait, I AM a bird." Wow, really really? What's interesting, though, is that the "camera" lingers a few seconds after the characters leave the scene on the favela, the human built trash-tin-dumpster living spaces crammed on top of each other, full of homeless, street-smart kids like the one meet in the film... It lingers, as if to almost say something, as if it will finally add something to all this taking place in Rio, and the economic necessity that some people might have in stealing rare animals, but it doesn't. Nor does the film shy of piling up many stereotypes, you know, all Brazilians care about is partying, and they fail at doing their jobs mostly because they just want to party, watch soccer, wear Carnival costumes and dance in the streets, no wait, even at home all the time. Naturally, the police are useless, the professor is useless, the animal smugglers are useless. Right? At times the stereotypes are a bit uncomfortable, because it is not clear why they are there. They are mostly used as stale plot devices, otherwise nothing would be believable, even in the cartoon-suspended-reality kind of believable. The only character worthy of any praise, in terms of vision and execution, is Nigel, the villain bird. The rest? I have already forgotten everything about them! The laughter sometimes was louder than the joke merited, mainly because people and children expected to be laughing. When it is hard to find something good to laugh at, you laugh hard at the lame jokes even harder. Note for parents: Children in the audience seemed to enjoy the film much more than the adults.