Rio is a story about Blu, a macaw who lives in Minnesota with his antisocial, bird-obsessed owner, Linda. One day, after being contacted by an equally bird-obsessed man named Tulio (voiced by Rodrigo Santoro—hubba hubba), Linda and Blu travel to Rio de Janeiro to repopulate Blu’s species (read: get Blu laid).
Once they arrive in Rio, there are, of course, many adventures. Blu gets stolen by poachers and, in his efforts to get back to Linda, meets a lot of cute cartoon birds who fly around and crack jokes about how Blu can’t fly and such. If you’re 7, you’ll laugh a lot.
The really funny thing, though, is perhaps less intentional. Jesse Eisenberg is the voice of Blu, and Rio comes hot on the heels of Eisenberg’s Oscar-nominated performance as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. Because Eisenberg’s voice and delivery played such a strong part in Social Network‘s success, it’s really hard to not imagine Zuckerberg when listening to Eisenberg, even when Eisenberg is doing the talking for a cartoon bird.
Anyway, obviously, there will be sequels to Rio—it is brought to you by the same people who did Ice Age and there have been, what, 27 of those movies now? One thing I hope they take into consideration next time around is that Rio could’ve used a whole lot more Tracy Morgan as the slobbery, bikini-wearing bulldog and a whole lot less bratty Anne Hathaway as the voice of Jewel, Blu’s love interest. I really dislike Hathaway and her high-school-theater-nerd-starved-for-attention vibe, which has become especially unbearable after watching her kiss people’s asses for three hours at the Oscars. Shudder. 
thank you, megan selig, for a useful review of a children’s movie. “If you’re 7, you’ll laugh a lot.” usually, they send lindy to these things, and i find out what a fifteen year old doesn’t like about a children’s movie. (sorry for the dig, but this review is unusally useful. i mean it. the sorry bit.)