Rio (2011)

RIO  (2011)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Carlos Saldanha
A vibrantly colorful animated feature about a rare bird, a blue macaw, who's captured and smuggled out of a South American jungle, ending up, improbably, in the ice-bound metropolis of Moose Lake, Minnesota. There he's taken in by a young girl and becomes her pet, best friend and soulmate, as she grows up to become the owner of a bookstore called (of course) the Blue Macaw. Eventually, both the bird and the bookseller end up back in Brazil, where the bird gets captured again, and, you know, I just realized you could probably watch this movie in the time it takes to explain the story. Anyway, it moves right along, Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Jamie Foxx and Tracy Morgan do some of the voices, and the songs are catchy without being annoying in the way that the songs in cartoons can sometimes be. If the little ones insist on watching and listening to the title track 10 times running, it might not even drive you crazy. Which is good. Because they might want to.