Rio Review

Disliking Rio would take an immense amount of will. It’s generic - given just a list of character descriptions, you could probably lay out a rather accurate sketch of the plot. But it’s made with so much verve, voiced so charmingly, and with such tropical colour daubed excitedly into every inch of the screen that stimulation is not optional. A surprisingly energetic Jesse Eisenberg voices Blu, a very rare bird shipped to Brazil so that he might mate with a female (Hathaway). But she has no interest, the two get kidnapped, yada yada yada. Jettisoning a few characters, who’ve been crammed in for maximum celebrity larynx concentration, would help, plus give more room for Jemaine Clements’ wonderfully bilious cockatoo and more of his brilliant songs (sample lyric: “Like an abandoned school, I’ve got no principles”). One is not enough.