Rio

Directed by Carlos Saldanha

(G)

***

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Worry no more if you’ve always ached to visit Brazil, said Nell Minow in the Chicago Sun-Times. With its “sun-drenched palette” and its “slinky, samba-licious soundtrack,” this family-friendly animated feature offers the giddiest immersion in Rio de Janeiro’s culture that you’re likely to get without paying airfare. Though there’s little that’s fresh in the movie’s “much-traveled story line about a pampered pet who has to learn to survive in the wild,” director Carlos Saldanha “takes evident pride in bringing his homeland to the screen.” He takes full advantage of 3D animation’s ability to whisk audiences from the rain forests to the beaches to the pulsing heart of a “sensationally festive Carnival parade.” Unfortunately, this movie works “so hard to have fun” that “it doesn’t breathe,” said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Once it sends a rare macaw named Blu back to Rio after a lifetime in a Minnesota cage, “there’s scarcely a moment that isn’t straining to entertain you.” The “story is predictable and the comedy uneven,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. But at least Saldanha has fashioned a “lovely tribute to his hometown.”