Rio 2

For this not being the summer movie season, we've seen more animated films than I certainly thought we'd see by now. We've seen "The Lego Movie", "The Nut Job", "Mr. Peabody & Sherman", even :The Muppets Most Wanted" if one even counted that. It being only April, we now have yet another animated flick in the form of "Rio 2" in the offing. With all these, how many will we see this summer?

It's a jungle out there for Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), Jewel (Anne Hathaway) and their three kids after they're hurtled from Rio de Janeiro to the wilds of the Amazon. As Blu tries to fit in, he goes beak-to-beak with the vengeful Nigel (Jemaine Clement) and also confronts Nigel's cohort Gabi (Kristin Chenoweth), and meets his most fearsome adversary of all: his father-in-law, Eduardo (Andy Garcia).
Meanwhile, Linda (Leslie Mann) and Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro) who are now married go to the Amazon to bring a bird they nursed back to health to its natural habitat. While there, they believe other birds like Jewel and Blu live there. So they go on TV and mention they will find them and when they do, it will help to get the area declared a preserve. However, a logger (Miguel Ferrer) not wanting that to happen, tries to stop them. What happens when all converge?

Others to round out the cast are will.i.am as Pedro, Jamie Fox as Nico, George Lopez as Rafael, Tracy Morgan as Luiz, Bruno Mars as Roberto, Rita Moreno as Aunt Mimi, Pierce Gagnon as Tiago, Jake T. Austin as Fernando, and Natalie Morales as Newscaster (voice).

This was directed by Carlos Saldanha ("Ice Age" (co-director) '02, "Robots" (co-director) '05, "Ice Age: The Meltdown" '06, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" '09, "Rio" '11). Obviously, by his resume, this guy knows his way around an animated film. Knowing this, it's not tough to wrap one's head around the fact that the direction is spot on. The primary culprit of this were the writers. It was written by Jenny Bicks, Yoni Brenner and Carlos Saldanha based on a story by Don Rhymer and Saldanha, which is based on characters created by Saldanha. Even though the running time was only 101 minutes, it seemed much longer. Was it my mood, or did it take seemingly forever for this story to get off the ground? Once the story finally took, it just flew and the pace matched the excitement of what was going on here. Not sure if there were too many writers which can, at times, be a problem, but the beginning simply lagged. Where this film soared was in the amazing colorful animation by Blue Sky Studios.

Certainly if you liked "Rio", you'll like this installment--even with the slower pace nearer the beginning. However, on the other side of the coin, if you were non-committal about "Rio", this will probably not wow you.

Out of 4 stars: 2.5                         Rated: G                            101mins.