Birds Eye View

Voices: Jesse Eisenberg,Anne Hathaway,Leslie Mann,Jamie Foxx,Will.i.am

rating: ***

Jesse Eisenberg has gone from being Mark Zuckerberg to Macaw pucker-up. As the central bird in this film about a domesticated macaw that is one of only two of its kind remaining on the planet,Eisenberg is sweet and earnest,warm and kind,nerdy and needy. Just the kind of animal that populates the animation world.

Caught from Rio and taken to Minnesota when he was just a fledgling,Blu,as he is called,has been raised by Linda (Mann). Both are grown-up now but are as inseparable,doing everything from brushing teeth to having coffee together. Blu has never known any other company,so much so that he doesn’t know how to even fly,and consults books to work out the aerodynamics of it when challenged to try his wings.

This cosy world of Linda and Blu turns upside down when an ornithologist turns up saying the bird has to be mated with the last remaining blue macaw female to preserve their species. And so,after some debate,Linda and Blu decide to travel to Rio.

Blu’s counterpart Jewel (Hathaway) doesn’t really swoon and fall into his arms,more intent on escaping from the cage she has been put in. An idea that completely confounds Blu,who finds the cage that is dressed up as a rainforest absolutely brilliant.

A man who smuggles exotic birds gets into the picture now,and you know how it will go before the happily ever after. Rio sticks to the well-tried arch but where it differs is in the zing it puts into each of its animals and the humans,true to both the place and time (“the Rio Ca-arnival”) the story is set in. From the monkeys having the better of tourists,to the tourists enjoying the sun,the sand,the water and the forests of Brazil,this film is as much about the macaws as the city they find themselves in (not surprising considering it is director Saldanha’s hometown).

The dialogue is also to the point,without being too cutesy or too clever. If only the story from the guys who gave us the Ice Age series wasn’t so linear,even to the point when,eventually and not a moment too soon,Blu takes flight.