Rio: Critic Reviews

Rio is a leap forward in quality and the finest work from Fox Animation.

Rio is less a Pixar-level pleasure than a busy, frantic, and overstuffed dessert of a movie. There's scarcely a moment that isn't straining to entertain you.

As kids' movies go, "Rio" brings a lot to the party.

Children should enjoy it.

Carlos Saldhana has here created a sweet-natured animation.

For its stunning iridescent look and infectious music, Rio is a refreshing adventure worth taking.

This is a movie that takes even the hoariest quest-peril-life lesson tropes of family animated films and imbues them with new life and rhythm.

Too timid to be either inspired or outrageously inept, Rio is merely a bird of a familiar feather.

Eisenberg's tremulous, earnest delivery matches Blu's big worrywart eyes perfectly, and he and Hathaway, to their credit, give it their all.

There are worse things than a movie that can't stop moving.

The humor's a little strange, and the action's a little frenetic, but all of it whooshes past in a swirl of tropical color and pseudo-South American bonhomie.

It's an intermittently charming... tale with some (and I do mean some) engaging voice work and many nifty if not staggeringly ingenious bits of action business.

Buoyed by local color - literally, with a vibrantly sun-drenched palette, a sensationally festive Carnival parade, and a slinky samba-licious soundtrack

The director, Carlos Saldanha, collaborated on the "Ice Age" trilogy. What he has developed here has tons of atmosphere and, less helpfully, tons of over-plotted chaos disguised as a story.

Storks samba! Toucans tumba! Parrots party in kaleidoscopic formations to the music of Sergio Mendes!

Rio will not set your heart afire, although its low-level consciousness raising about illegally smuggled animals is nice. Mostly, it's brightly colored fluff, but then, it's supposed to be.

Some live-action films set in exotic locales can be so atmospheric and picturesque that viewers walk away feeling as if they've taken a short vacation. "Rio" accomplishes this feat, which must be a minor miracle for an animated movie.

Like its flight-challenged parrot protagonist, Rio takes a while to get off the ground but manages to soar by the end.

I have a feeling that older audience members will, like me, be getting restless during this celebrity-voice-driven, generically plotted variation on "Madagascar."

Comical, colorful, wonderfully cast and beautifully animated, "Rio" is the first Blue Sky movie that could be compared to the best of Pixar.

A fairly typical children's movie, but at least it moves along with purpose!

The generic story elements can't spoil the real achievement of Rio, which is a series of vividly choreographed set-pieces.

The only thing surprising about this lackluster animated production is that it attracted an A-list voice cast. But that's how things are today when even mediocre animation can be a big draw.

A tropical-colored wingding that will have kids and their chaperones shaking a tail feather to its pulsating Latin beats.

Nothing deep or heavy here -- just a good time and a pleasurable escape.