Rio

OPENING: 04/15/2011

STUDIO: Fox

RUN TIME: 96 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
From the creators of Ice Age

Opening Statement
While Blue Sky Animation has provided top-flight animation work since their enjoyable debut feature Ice Age, their storytelling has always been a little run-of-the-mill. Sadly, that trend continues with Rio, a great-looking film with a forgettable plot and ho-hum characters.

Facts of the Case
Our central figure is a Blue Macaw (Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network) who has unfortunately been given the rather on-the-nose name of Blu. For most of his life, Blu has lived in Minnesota with his good-natured owner Linda (Leslie Mann, Funny People). One day, an ornithologist named Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro, Che) pays Linda a visit and informs her that Blu–who is the last male of his species–must come to Rio De Janeiro to mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway, Ella Enchanted), who is the last female of the species. After coming to terms with the importance of the situation, Linda agrees to travel to Rio so Blu and Jewel can get it on.

Unfortunately, Blu and Jewel don’t really get along at first. To make matters worse, the two birds are then stolen by some human birdnappers and an evil cockatoo named Nigel (Jermaine Clement, Dinner for Schmucks). After escaping the clutches of their villainous abductors, the macaws receive assistance from a toucan named Rafael (George Lopez, The Spy Next Door), a slobbering bulldog (Tracy Morgan, 30 Rock) and two goofy music-loving birds (Jamie Foxx, Ray and Will.i.am, X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Will Blu and Jewel ever find their way home? Will they be able to continue escaping the savage Nigel? Will they fall in love somewhere along the way? Yeah, probably.

The Evidence
I realize that the folks at Blue Sky haven’t exactly demonstrated vast amounts of originality in their plotting up until now, but it seems they’ve already started borrowing from themselves. This whole “two central characters must mate or their species will become extinct” plot was the driving force of Ice Age: The Meltdown (not to mention plenty of dystopian pornography). It’s an odd idea for a children’s movie to begin with; a very odd one to use more than once. The gimmick is even less interesting this time around, serving as a springboard for a film which feels routine far too often.

There’s a brilliant animated short which precedes Rio entitled Scrat’s Continental Crackup, featuring the beloved creature from the Ice Age films. It’s a hysterical bit of cause-and-effect comedy which sets up cataclysmic events in a delightfully organic fashion. The short’s graceful execution only serves to accentuate the fairly wheezy plotting of the main feature. Far too often, it feels as if the characters are simply going through the motions because the screenwriters are forcing them to do so. Despite the fact that Blu and Linda are neurotic Americans who are a bit intimidated by the loud South American flair of Rio during Carnival, we know there’s going to be a moment near the end where both lose their inhibitions and shake their tail feathers. That’s fine, but the film doesn’t even bother to grant the characters a slow progression to that point, instead simply ordering their characters to do a complete 180-degree turn in the closing moments.

The romance between Blu and Jewel takes a similarly predictable path, as the two begin on a note of hostility, slowly begin to warm up to each other, engage in a stupid argument that leads to a stupid breakup and eventually wind up back in each other’s arms…er, wings. This romantic comedy formula is just about the most tedious cliché in the history of cinema, and yet filmmakers continue to embrace it on an alarmingly frequent basis.

Still, there are pleasures to be found in Rio, particularly in the technical department. The film is admittedly gorgeous to look at, as the animators have done a very impressive job of capturing the vibrant energy of the film’s location. Character design is excellent and there’s a lot of subtle physical comedy that works far better than much of the dialogue. I also quite enjoyed Clement’s big musical number, which offers the actor’s patented Flight of the Conchords charm (“Like an abandoned school, I have no principles,” he coos wickedly). The other numbers (chiefly performed by Foxx and Will.i.am) are less inspired, as they often resemble second-rate Black Eyed Peas tunes (“I wanna party, party, party,” goes one particularly underwhelming song).

The characters may have problems, but at least the voice work is excellent throughout. Jesse Eisenberg brings his Woody Allen-ish charm to the main character and interacts quite nicely with Hathaway (who doesn’t have many good lines but voices them with enthusiasm, anyway). Clement is delightful every time he appears (I love the way he chews on a phrase like, “bundle of burgled baubles”), while Foxx, Will.i.am and Lopez make the most of their generically wacky supporting characters. One of the best turns comes from Tracy Morgan, who brings a fun, loopy quality to his role as the slobbering bulldog. Somehow, he brings an endearing innocence to lines like, “Doesn’t watching birds fly make you want to chase them and bite their heads off?”

Closing Statement
Kids will enjoy Rio for the bright colors, cheerful music and lively pace, but most adults will find the film a little tiresome. With a creaky plot and superficial life lessons (I’m pretty sure “Get out of your shell and party” falls a few notches such old standbys as “Be yourself,” “Follow your dreams,” and “Listen to your heart”), Blue Sky’s latest only has surface-level pleasures to offer. Too bad there aren’t enough of them to make the film a rewarding experience for viewers of all ages.

The Verdict
6/10

The Social Network

OPENING: 10/01/2010

STUDIO: Columbia Pictures

RUN TIME: 121 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.

Opening Statement
I have to admit, I was skeptical when I first heard that David Fincher was making a movie about Facebook. Sure, David Fincher is one of my favorite living directors (I regard his Zodiac as one of the best films of the past decade), but a Facebook movie? The idea seemed like such a blatant attempt at being “trendy”; perhaps this year’s equivalent of something like The Net. However, once critics actually saw the film they proclaimed it one of the best of the year. Does The Social Network live up to the hype? In a word: Yes.

Facts of the Case
The film offers a partially fictionalized look at Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg, Zombieland). We first encounter Mark as a student at Harvard University, where he’s on a date with his girlfriend (Rooney Mara, A Nightmare on Elm Street). They’re engaged in a conversation he thinks is going quite well but which she finds obnoxious. She breaks up with him then and there. Frustrated and bitter, Mark storms up to his dorm room and lashes out at her on his blog. Perhaps feeling a misguided sense of animosity towards women in general, Mark then quickly proceeds to create a program that allows the male students to examine side-by-side photos of certain female students and then vote on which of the two is better-looking. The program is such an immediate success that Harvard’s entire system crashes due to the overload. This earns Mark six months of academic probation and the attention of quite a few people on campus.

Soon after, Mark is approached by three students who are in need of his assistance. They want to create a social networking website for Harvard. Mark is intrigued by the idea and sees potential in it. He agrees to their proposal, but rather than working on the site they’ve requested he begins building his own website with the assistance of his best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus). As Mark’s website (initially called “the facebook”) starts to explode in popularity, the students who gave him the idea grow increasingly angry and begin to seek ways to take legal action. Mark’s life eventually enters a furious maelstrom of lawsuits, money, and betrayal, all underscored by the meteoric success of Facebook.

The Evidence
As I was browsing the reviews of The Social Network in the days before I saw the film, I noticed comparisons to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane kept popping up. Generally, a favorable comparison is some sort of critical hyperbole indicating the film in question is one of the greatest ever made, but in this instance it’s entirely appropriate. Not because The Social Network is one of the greatest films of all time (it’s remarkably good, but anything beyond that shouldn’t be stated without a reasonable passage of time), but rather because it often plays like a modern-day remake of Welles’ great film; a character-driven tale with epic themes that finds its power in very intimate moments.

It’s somewhat astonishing to consider what the film achieves in its lightning-quick two-hour running time; there are more ideas and layers to consider than in any other film I’ve seen this year. The two men primarily responsible for its success are David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin, two consummate professionals whose many successes far outweigh their failures. The Social Network finds them both at the peak of their powers. Fincher once again demonstrates his superb dramatic instincts and tightly-controlled attention to detail, while Sorkin’s customary intelligence, wit, and passion are freed from the heavy-handed sermonizing that sometimes drags down his work. The film is absurdly tight on a technical level, from Jeff Cronenworth’s elegant cinematography and Kirk Baxter/Angus Wall’s crisp editing, to an atypical but effective score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

And yet, for all the film’s technical virtues (which pretty much guarantee it will earn a boatload of Oscar nominations), The Social Network‘s resonance largely lies in the intense emotional undercurrent beneath this breathlessly paced saga. Much has been made of the fact that the film’s portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg is not exactly flattering, but it should also be noted the portrayal is by no means unsympathetic. Some may regard him a spiteful creep, but I found a well-intentioned, intelligent, ambitious young man whose social inhibitions and relationship problems caused him to make a couple of crucial mistakes. Plenty of good people make the sort of mistakes Zuckerberg did; it’s just that his mistakes involved a lot more money and publicity.

Jesse Eisenberg is a terrific choice for the role of Mark, depicting him as a young man whose wheels are spinning so quickly he’s almost always many pages ahead of everyone else. He’s unstoppable when he puts his mind to solving a technical issue or developing an idea, but seems awkward and uncomfortable when confronted with anything that needs a more personal response. This particularly hurts Eduardo, a fundamentally nice person who knows that Mark is his friend but needs to feel it. Andrew Garfield is an actor who impresses me more and more each time I see him; his exposed-nerve performance as Eduardo plays beautifully against Eisenberg’s deeply introverted work. Justin Timberlake is also spot-on as former Napster head honcho Sean Parker, his rock star energy perfectly suited to the film’s most colorful role.

Closing Statement
I can’t recommend The Social Network highly enough. It’s an ambitious film that succeeds on every level, from its blazing opening act to that devastatingly perfect final scene. Go see it now.

The Verdict
10/10

Zombieland

OPENING: 10/02/2009

STUDIO: Columbia Pictures

RUN TIME: 80 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
This place is so dead.

Opening Statement
Veering into comedy much less philosophical and far more visceral is the entertaining zombie comedy (zom-com?) Zombieland, which takes place in a world more or less overrun by zombies.

The Case
There are only a few humans surviving in this wasteland, including the obsessive-compulsive Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), the rough-and-tumble Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), the smart and savvy Wichita (Emma Stone), and spunky Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). This unlikely foursome teams up, fights zombies, and works out their personal issues to very amusing and slightly touching effect. It’s an offbeat, fun little movie that makes a nice companion piece to Edgar Wright’s similarly enjoyable Shaun of the Dead.

One of the odd things about Zombieland is the way it’s constructed. It opens with a series of very violent scenes (including a particularly gross, blood-soaked opening credits) and slowly works its way towards good-natured sweetness. The film accomplishes what it needs to, by providing the requisite levels of laughs and gore, but goes the extra mile by actually making us care about the characters involved. Beneath the seemingly tough-as-nails, R-rated exterior is a movie that really loves these eccentric survivors. Too many horror films (even comedically-inclined ones) encourage the audience to speculate on who will be the first to die and eagerly await their inventive deaths. It’s hard to imagine many people watching Zombieland and not wanting all four of the primary characters to make it to the end credits. Let the zombies do all the dying. Toss in a hilarious cameo, a handful of priceless lines, and a nutso-action-packed finale worthy of the word "payoff" and you’ve got a fun flick worth checking out.


The Verdict
8/10