Rio 2
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| This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Awful Movies Wiki from the Internet Archive. |
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 The tag line is a lie, it ain't on in the Amazon.
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"Much like Emperor's New Groove, this is another case where I found the villains far more interesting to watch than the heroes. Nigel the melodramatic cockatoo is his usual self and Gabi the poison dart frog stands out as the most interesting character to me. She gives a memorable vocal performance. Unfortunately, Rio 2 just ended up being a muddled mess of a story and hurt many of the things I liked about the original movie."
— PhantomStrider, [Top 3 Worst/Best BlueSky Movies[4]]
Rio 2 is a 2014 American 3D computer-animated musical comedy film produced by Blue Sky Studios and directed by Carlos Saldanha. It is the sequel to Rio. A sequel is currently in development. It was released on March 20, 2014, in all countries except for the United States, and on April 11, 2014, in the United States.
Plot
Blue macaws Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), Jewel (Anne Hathaway), and their three children are comfortably settled in the city -- perhaps too comfortably. Jewel fears that the children are becoming more like humans than birds. After learning that she and Blu may not be the last blue macaws, after all, Jewel decides that their little family should visit the Amazon jungle. It's there that Blu meets his formidable father-in-law (Andy Garcia) and goes beak-to-beak with archnemesis Nigel (Jemaine Clement).
Bad Qualities
- The biggest main problem with this movie is literally a birds version of Meet the Parents and Avatar, as it plagiarized their entire plots.
- Similar to the humor of Shrek Forever After and Puss in Boots, there are some jokes or dialogue inappropriate for a family movie that are very badly utilized, the most evident being the moment when Blu imagines Jewel or Linda talking with Tulio, where there are sexual references.
- The film, instead of feeling like a sequel, feels like tourist propaganda for Brazil, taking into account that the film takes place in Brazil and the year it was released was 2014, same year of the FIFA World Cup, that would take place in Brazil.
- Another problem with the movie is that the characters have become incredibly lackluster in comparison to the original film:
- Jewel is flanderized in this sequel as she went from being a snarky, yet mature and caring girlfriend to a selfish, toxic wife who takes control of every decision towards Blu and their children. She is also completely clueless about the obvious advances of the childhood friend, the moderate harassment by her father to her husband, and any discomfort he may be feeling in this strange environment. While it is understandable that Jewel is happy to be home, this shouldn't prevent her common sense from working. But this is the scene where she outright gets hateable, as even though Blu is doing everything to fit with the tribe to make her and the kids happy, she accuses Blu of only thinking about himself, when Jewel herself never stopped to think about how Blu felt and basically pressured him to go to the Amazon with them in the first place.
- While this deleted scene can be very heart-breaking for Blu and Jewel's fans, at least it has a much better written and more realistic and mature dialogue that actually shows some character development from both Blu and Jewel.
- Thankfully she redeems herself at the end of the movie and is also alright in the beginning.
- Blu, while likable, is treated like a butt monkey throughout the entire movie, as he is criticized by Jewel's father who has no hope in him whatsoever, and as mentioned above, Jewel is also critical and unfair to him too.
- Rafael, Nico, and Pedro, while likable as well, became pointless comic reliefs as their subplot of scouting talent for Carnival in the Amazon only serves to give the trio something to do in this sequel. They barely even interact with Blu at all aside from two scenes.
- Many of the secondary characters are either absent or underutilized to supporting/minor characters just so that the newer characters would get more screen time than them.
- Luiz gets reduced to a minor role who only appears in a few scenes of the movie.
- Eva, Rafael's wife, appearing in two scenes just to sing a small song to make a comic relief about how a terrible singer she is and nothing else entirely.
- Fernando is reduced to a literally five seconds cameo, despite being a major character in the first film. Also, even though he is significantly older, he is stated to be 16 years old, which is still underage. Then how come Linda and Tulio left him alone at Blu Bird Sanctuary for what it's implied to be a six months expedition on the Amazon?
- Jewel is flanderized in this sequel as she went from being a snarky, yet mature and caring girlfriend to a selfish, toxic wife who takes control of every decision towards Blu and their children. She is also completely clueless about the obvious advances of the childhood friend, the moderate harassment by her father to her husband, and any discomfort he may be feeling in this strange environment. While it is understandable that Jewel is happy to be home, this shouldn't prevent her common sense from working. But this is the scene where she outright gets hateable, as even though Blu is doing everything to fit with the tribe to make her and the kids happy, she accuses Blu of only thinking about himself, when Jewel herself never stopped to think about how Blu felt and basically pressured him to go to the Amazon with them in the first place.
- The film can be described as 101 minutes of torture for Blu, because he is constantly treated as the butt monkey, as he is criticized by Eduardo who has no hopes in him, especially after Blu reveals his relationship with Linda, making Eduardo believe Blu is an enemy and impose a lot of dumb roles on Blu, who gets interrupted whenever he tries to even say how he feels. Not to mention the jerky Scarlet Macaws who bullies Blu, Tiago awakening him up with a spider-man, Bia literally forcing him to eat mud against his will, Roberto's obvious romantic advances on Jewel in front of Blu, along with Jewel's cluelessness to all of this that make her seem brainless. What makes this torture is even worse is that Blu does everything for his family, cooking and playing for his children, trying to get a Brazil nut to Jewel as a surprise breakfast, he does all he can to prove his worth to the Spix Macaw tribe despite his initial discomfort at being in the forest, stands by Jewel's side during the whole tribe despite not wanting to go, but he places her will above his own, made a lot of sacrifices to make Jewel and his children happy, despite his domisticated ways and initial dislike of Amazon, overall, he is an amazing father and husband, but the movie weirdly tries to make HIM the wrong guy in all this, but fails miserably because the audiences are not dumb and they will notice Blu was the least guy on Earth to deserve what he goes through. Because of this, the way Blu is treated makes the movie very annoying to watch sometimes and even mean-spirited.
- Plot hole: if Eduardo states that he really did name his daughter Jewel, how on earth did Tulio learned her name in the first film if he can't in reality understand her?
- As in the case of Shrek the Third or the last two Ice Age sequels, the film has a large number of characters as protagonists as well as antagonist and secondary characters.
- By giving a large number of characters, only Blue and Nigel can be considered the only important characters in the film.
- Some of the newer characters aren't any better:
- Big Boss is Rio's version of Myles Standish from Free Birds, as both are weak and stereotypical hunters who are not much of a threat except for the animals (mainly the birds). Also despite being the main antagonist, he doesn't have that much more amount of screen time.
- The Scarlet Macaws are unlikeable jerks who take the tree nuts to themselves. Fortunately, they redeem themselves by helping the Spix Macaw flock with the battle against the loggers.
- Eduardo (Jewel’s father) is nothing more than a stereotypical overprotective freak towards Blu since he treats him like dirt just to become like the macaws.
- Mimi, although her depiction in the original script was being against Eduardo's hatred towards Blu, she barely does anything in the movie and she's mostly a background character who either is there just to do some minor things or does nothing at all, although she still is admittedly a tolerable character, especially compared to Eduardo, the Scarlet Macaws.
- Roberto comes across as an annoying Gary Stuesque show-off towards Jewel, although it's somewhat understandable as they are childhood friends who haven't seen each other for ages (and at least he doesn't hit on the protagonist's love interest like these kinds of characters do more often than not).
- The movie can be mean-spirited at times such as the aftermath of the Spix Macaws losing the playoff to the Scarlet Macaws.
- Similar to Shrek the Third, although the animation is incredibly beautiful, most of the character shots are close-ups and some graphics are similar to those of Play Station 2 or 3.
- The film makes the mistake of Shrek the Third, of focusing on serious issues such as the idealization of the family or the damage that human beings do to the environment, but at the same time, it focuses on plots that have nothing to do with Carnival, football game and the trip through the jungle.
- The musical moments, although they are beautiful and very funny, feel at a certain point very forced compared to the first film some seem to be copies of Disney films.
- The film has a very fast pace since the characters continually move from one place to another without the story unfolding correctly.
- Much like the final two Ice Age sequels, this movie tries so hard to fill the movie with too many subplots to the point where the story ended up being a very big mess of story ideas:
- Blu trying to get along with Jewel's father and childhood friend.
- Nigel trying to get revenge on Blu and his friends.
- The husband and wife relationship between Blu and Jewel.
- The soccer playoff between the Spix and Scarlet Macaws.
- Blu trying to be a good husband and father.
- The Jungle American Idol by Nico, Pedro, Rafael, and Carla.
- The hunters cutting down the trees and ruining the environment.
- Linda and Tulio's expedition on the Amazon.
- Misleading title: Most of the plot occurs in the Amazon rainforest instead of Rio, aside from the beginning. Granted, this was done because the original film is titled Rio, but it also was set in Rio, unlike this one. They could have at least called it Rio 2: Amazon Journey or something, like the Madagascar sequels.
- False publicity: The main poster gives the impression that the film will focus on Blu's family and their friends on an adventure in the Amazon, however in the film this plot is left out, at the same time given the minutes on-screen having the characters only Blu can be considered as the protagonist.
- Despite being one of the best parts of the film, Nigel doesn't interact with any of the heroes (except for Rafael, Nico, Pedro and Carla while disguised) until the climax of the film and is just for two seconds, thus making seem his role in the film pretty pointless.
- The film has three serious plot holes, although, in Rio, it is explained that Nigel survived, in this film, it is said that with the blow of the plane's helm, he will never be able to fly again when in real life if a bird is hit by a propeller it would be pulverized and in cases of survival it would have lethal scars for life or its parts would have to be amputated, something that is not explained in Nigel.
- The second is how Blu and Nigel survived the bomb, when in real life if a bird is hit by a bomb and even if it is far away, it risks being killed or injured for life.
- The third is when Eduardo didn't give much explanation about how the macaws managed to survive the forest fire that was vaguely mentioned when he met with Jewel.
- It suffers from the overused generic cliches that you would normally see in a sequel.
- While the movie tries to deliver a much-needed environmental message (especially in the fall of 2019, when deforestation and burning in the Amazon forest only increased), the movie barely focuses on that side of the story, which makes it ineffective.
- In fact, the plot of the film that within the Amazon there are more Spix's macaws or hidden blue macaws becomes anticlimactic if one takes into account that in 2018 and 2019 this species was declared by BirdLife International extinct in bone freedom that cannot live in their natural habitat.
- Similar to the case of Ice Age: Collision Course, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Minions, Shrek the Third, and Cars 2, this movie was, unfortunately, a blow to the Rio franchise, as Rio 2 was originally going to expand the franchise with a third party that was going to be released in 2017 or 2018, but due to the mixed reception, this project was frozen and there was no news about its production, at the same time it was learned that several voice actors refused to return to this third part, until the day that Disney announced its sequel and from what is known wants to continue with the first film.
Good Qualities
- The animation is very beautiful and also manages to stay true to the original movie's animation.
- Just like the first movie, the musical songs are amazing (especially "What Is Love" in the opening scene of this film), as well as John Powell's original score (even the version of 20th Century Fox theme).
- The song "Beautiful Creatures" is pretty amazing and traditional. It is for this reason that it was included in the ending ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
- The voice acting is still good and talented, especially Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Jemaine Clement, and the new cast of Andy Garcia and Miguel Ferrer.
- Some characters are still as likable (or at least tolerable) as in the first film:
- Blu, despite being treated like a butt-monkey but generally sympathetic, is shown to be an amazing father and husband, cooking and playing for his children, trying to get a Brazil nut to Jewel as a surprise breakfast, he does all he can to prove his worth to the Spix Macaw tribe despite his initial discomfort at being in the forest, stands by Jewel's side during the whole tribe despite not wanting to go, but he places her will above his own, made a lot of sacrifices to make Jewel and his children happy, despite his domisticated ways and initial dislike of Amazon. His knowledge of human technology is also what allows the Spix Macaws to defend their home from the Loggers.
- Rafael, Nico, Pedro (despite being pointless), Luiz (despite being underused), Linda, Tulio and Fernando (despite the latter being exactly just a five seconds cameo) are also still likeable.
- Nigel is still an awesome villain, if not better than he was in the first film, and Gabi and Charlie are also hilarious and entertaining as his sidekick. Like Granny in Ice Age: Continental Drift, this trio is easily the best and funniest part of the movie.
- Blu and Jewel's children Carla, Bia, and Tiago are also quite likable. Tiago, in particular, is the most charismatic of the three.
- Eva and Mimi are alright too.
- Jewel is also tolerable at the beginning of the movie, and she redeems herself at the end, as mentioned in BQ#3.
- The environmental message the movie tries to deliver is very necessary (especially after 2019, when deforestation and burning in the Amazon rainforest only increased), despite not being the main focus of the movie, which caused it to not be effective enough, as mentioned in BQ#10.
- On a side note, it has good moral lessons about how you shouldn't run from your problems.
- The ending is kinda nice and saved the franchise from ending on a sour note.
- However, it is worth mentioning that this film was not necessarily supposed to be the ending to the franchise, as the only known reason why there was not a Rio 3 is that Blue Sky Studios shut down (although it was eventually confirmed that Rio 3 is officially in development). Had existed in reality, it would have saved the franchise. Hopefully it won't received The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild treatment, that is.
- The first act is very nice, as it feels like a true and honorable sequel to the first film, even though several writing issues show up once the characters arrive at the Amazon.
- Some funny moments, such as Tiago scaring Blu awake with a spider, Blu pulling out a cup from his fanny pack and starting to drink out of a fountain in Ouro Preto, taking a beak full of water while he looks up only to notice Nico, Pedro and Rafael using the same water to wash, causing a disgusted Blu to spit out the water, Nico and Pedro having to carry an asleep Rafael, the training scene between Blu and Eduardo (despite it still being mean-spirited towards Blu, but at least here, it's done in an admittedly enjoyable way) and all the scenes involving Nigel, Gabi, and Charlie.
- Speaking of Ouro Preto, the scene where Blu and his family and friends travel around Brazil while heading to the Amazon is amazing, no doubt the best scene in the movie. Also, like the first film, it stays true to the Brazilian culture.
- The soccer playoff scene between the Spix Macaws and the Scarlet Macaws is also great, despite serving nothing to the actual main plot of the movie (it doesn't change that Eduardo, Roberto, and the Scarlet Macaws are still unlikeable characters though).
- The concept of Blu, his family and friends visiting the Amazon (while somewhat cliched and a bit unoriginal) was pretty interesting.
Trivia
- Much like its predecessor, three of four Angry Birds Rio episodes - all visually tied to Rio 2 - have been released. The first, "Rocket Rumble", was released in December 2013, the second, "High Dive", in February 2014, and the third, "Blossom River", in April 2014. The Timber Tumble episode adds a hint feature that tells where to sling the bird. In July 2015, a game update added bird coins that allow players to unlock levels that were previously locked. Surprisingly, those were better than this movie.
- The movie is the only time Blue Sky Studios has ever made a sequel outside the Ice Age franchise. All six others are just original films.
- Nico and Pedro have a much less big role in this film.
- Nigel often makes Shakespeare references during the film.
Videos
References
- ↑ Rio 2 film credits
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20220926073953/https://web.archive.org/web/20090630013226/http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170211005613/en/Twentieth-Century-Fox-Animation-Announces-RIO-2
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20220926073953/https://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=rio2.htm
- ↑ See video 4
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