Rio

Rio starts with the life of a macaw that is unable to fly. All other macaws can fly barring Spix’s. It’s a commonplace thing in the lives of macaws that they are smuggled and then abandoned by the smugglers in the United States.

After one such incident, the blue macaw is also left alone. But it is his good fortune that a girl named Linda sees him and brings him to her home. The macaw then gets his name, Blu. Linda and Blu forge a great relationship and would have gone on to spend the rest of their lives that way, had Tulio not visited the bookstore owned by Linda. Tulio was a scientist. When he sees Blu in the bookstore with Linda, he tells her about Blu’s uniqueness as being the only last male macaw in existence. He takes him to Rio de Janeiro where he intends Blu to mate with Jewel (a female macaw), so that the specie continues to survive. The plan goes horribly wrong when in Brazil, both Blu and Jewel are captured by smugglers.

Blu makes several attempts to escape with Jewel but his inability to fly often leaves him in their custody, or at some place close to the smugglers. Back home, Linda is furious at Tulio and is saddened by grief over Blu’s disappearance. She wants him back at any cost, and so spreads news about Blu’s disappearance, hoping his return. Finally, it’s Blu himself, who fights the smugglers and hatches a plan to escape, when the smugglers were taking him and Jewel away on a plane. Whether he manages to escape or not, is for you to find out!

Rio is a stunning combination of spectacular visuals and a heart-warming tale that manages to make you float into a dreamy world. It can well be termed as the best animation of 2011 and we can be sure of the Oscars coming its way. The movie’s beauty lies in its simplistic plot, which weaves itself around two macaws; a male named Blu, who lives in Minnesota and his female counterpart, Jewel, who’s spent her whole life in a golden cage in the spellbinding place called Rio.

The breathtakingly beautiful scenery will make you want to step through the screen into the unbelievable paradise of Rio. The movie is a masterpiece of animation and does perfect justice to all that it attempts to do, which is a lot; right from the challenge of depicting a land as enrapturing as Rio, to developing a romance between two birds. I’m hoping for its sequel and till my hope becomes a reality, I don’t mind again watching this brilliant animated movie!