Rio

Took the kids to see Rio today. It’s a nice little movie, easily suitable for ages 5 and up. The lass loved it; the boy not so much. He liked the humor portion, but the relationship stuff bored him. I guess that makes him a typical 7 year old boy. The lass liked it so much she wanted to get the video already.

The gist of the movie is Rio is the last male “blue macaw” and he is taken from his cozy little existence in Minnesota to Rio to meet Jewel, the last female “blue macaw” in the hopes of fixing their species predicament. The problems arise in the form of a culture clash since Rio has never really known life without a caring human, while Jewel has never known captivity. Right about the time the two of them agree to disagree, some smugglers chain them together. From there on, it’s a typical love bird story.

The plot is spiced up with some help from a Tucan, some other plucky little birds, a Salsa loving bulldog and a rather nasty Cockatoo. Oh, and monkeys. A bunch of monkeys. And I’m not referring to the humans in the story.

While the relationship humor is somewhat over the kids’ heads, the physical humor certainly wasn’t, judging by the frequent laughter coming from them. There’s just enough there for adults and the story is well executed enough to make it an enojoyable 90 minutes. The 3-D aspect of the movie isn’t really important, though it does provide for some remarkable flying sequences. Of course, for just shy of $50 to see the movie, I’d say it’s perfectly understandable to wait for it to come out on DVD or BR.