What can I say about the Rio movies? Well they're very fun, silly, upbeat and cute with a cute romance and dazzling animation. However, Rio 2 is definitely the weaker of the 2 movies. It feels much sillier and over the top than the first movie. At least the first movie had a sweet center and could be taken seriously despite being a bit silly. With Rio 2, every other scene is a joke and most scenes are way over the top and goofy. It doesn't quite get to the point where it's cringe worthy but it does come close. The other major problem with this movie is how many subplots there are, I mean it's just ridiculous. At least the first movie had one main plot with one side-plot but Rio 2 has 10 subplots at least. Let's see, we have, the city boy in the country, the hard to please the father cliché, the jealousy story despite the couple being married and have kids, Linda and Tulio searching for blue macaws, the red macaws and blue macaws playing football, Blu and Jewel's kids, one of the kids putting on a talent show, the environmental message, one of the birds looking for a new hat, Nigel plotting against Blu and Jewel and the poison dart frog with a huge crush on Nigel. Did I miss a few? So as you can probably tell, none of these subplots get enough focus. The movie often sporadically switches between stories until the climax where every single subplot crashes together and resolve the plot. Because of this, the movie is extremely sloppy, scattered and unfocused that it becomes hard to follow. Most of the subplots could've been cut out since they're so meaningless. The only ones that felt necessary were the loggers' subplot, Nigel's subplot and maybe Linda and Tulio's subplot. However, I don't really like the former subplot either because like many others, I am sick and tired of movies shoving this message down our throats. It worked in Wall-E only because it's Pixar and Andrew Stanton. However, to this movie's credit, it doesn't get that much focus and it isn't shoved down your throats as much as some other animated movies. *cough cough* Epic *cough* Ferngully *cough* Avatar *cough cough* Cloudy with a *cough* Chance of *cough* Meatballs. However, this movie isn't all bad. Despite being extremely over the top, Nigel is a fun villain and the poison dart frog that has a crush on him is a fun character and yeah I ship it. I really did love the first 25 minutes of this film where we see Blu and Jewel interact with their kids and it shows their differing ideas on raising the kids and we do get a fun song and a cool montage. However once they started introducing all those subplots like I said, the movie started getting really sloppy. Anyways, I also have to give props to the animation of this movie. It's some of the most fluid, colorful, fast-paced, and smooth animation Blue Sky has ever done along with the first Rio, and The Peanuts Movie. Every little detail of the animation is accounted for including every little feather and leaves on the trees however, it still is it's own style and doesn't look overly realistic. It's still catoony and over the top but also stylistic and colorful. The songs, as few as there are, are the highlights of the movie and why it deserves to exist. The animation really shines in these scenes, the instrumentals and the music itself is really nice and easy on the ears. I'll admit, the humor was also pretty good at parts. Overall, this movie is a fun watch but not as good as the first. I'd say at best it's a mindless time-killer.
Review of Rio 2
