Film Review - Rio 2 (2014)

Rio 2 is the continuation of the first Rio film from 2011 and again stars Jesse Eisenberg and Blu and Anne Hathaway as Jewel and both now have kids of their own and Jewel decides its time to go and see the Amazon rainforest so their kids can see what life is like in the wild but life in the jungle won't all be fun and games.

In a year which has given us the Lego Movie and How to Train your Dragon 2 both of which have been great family entertainments, it's disappointing to say that Rio 2 is almost entirely forgettable on so many levels, the first of those is that the animation is almost completely flat and has no real pop to it like the animation in Lego Movie and HTTYD 2 did instead it all just looks really rubbery in terms of the human characters and the various environments well again they just look dull and flat.

But the biggest problem here is that the film has no real central story to tie itself together with and instead you have 4 or 5 different plotlines all trying to be told at the same time and they are:

- Blu trying to fit in with the life of the jungle

- The other birds in the group trying to find new talent for their carnivale show

- The rival birds wanting control over the rainforest

- The big bad evil loggers wanting to tear down the rainforest

- The bad bird wanting revenge against Blu Wrath of Khan style

And finally the love triangle with another bird who once knew Jewel and yet all of these plotlines become entangled in their own messy web and as a result you just sit there feeling bored by the whole damn thing as the film can't make up its mind as to which story it wants to tell well how about you get rid of those god damn loggers for a start as first of all they add nothing whatsoever to the plot and second it's also there to hammer in the "Save the Rainforests" message that was there in Smegging Ferngully.

Smegging hell does every kids film these days and especially those for young children like this one have to have some sort of bad wicked person in it as well as a message, couldn't this have just been light hearted fun with the birds and the pretty good flight skills they show in the climax, it's not that hard guys really.

But alas it wasn't to be and the real sin here is the waste of Andy Garcia in a key role, I love him in the Untouchables as the sharp shooting George Stone but here he just spouts phrases and yells a lot, what a terrible waste of a great actor.

And lastly the 3D in this film is utterly utterly utterly pointless and it hurt my eyes to watch it in that way, go for a 2D session if you can find one.

So all in all I just cannot recommend Rio 2 to anyone over 6 or 7 years of age as the animation is dull and the storyline is a mess, a real shame after Lego and HTTYD 2 were so good this year, 1.5 out of 5.