Rio 2

Release Date: April 11, 2014

Watch Date: July 4 – July 5, 2025

“It’s a jungle out there for Blu, Jewel, and their three kids as they journey from the magical city of Rio to the wilds of the Amazon, where they discover a long lost tribe of macaws. As Blue tries to fit in, he goes beak-to-beak with the vengeful Nigel, takes on loggers in the rainforest, and meets the most fearsome adversary of all – his father-in-law.”

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If you’ve ever had kids you’ll know that sometimes they get a little obsessed with movies. For our daughter it’s currently KPop Demon Hunters, don’t ask me how or why but she can literally recite it verbatim and knows all the moves to every dance routine performed – which I personally think is pretty impressive for a four year old but I could be biased, and for our son, after we watched the first Rio movie back in May, it became Rio.

Now this was beneficial for two reasons, one, because I was sick of listening to ‘Back to the Outback’ over and over and secondly, because there’s a sequel to Rio, which means he can obsessively watch the one movie, and then switch to the sequel and I am not listening to the same thing on loop. So that works out pretty well.

He’s actually recently become aware of our blog, and he’s been trying to pick out Disney movies for our family movie nights specifically from Disney and then giving his opinion after them (this one gets a solid 2 out of 3 stars from him – which is the ranking system he’s decided on, and no, I don’t know why it’s missing a whole star).

So of course that meant ‘Rio 2’ was going to be selected at some point, and since we’ve been majorly slacking on Disney movies for a variety of reasons that are much too difficult to get into here, it seemed like as good a time as any.

This movie is cute. I don’t think it packs as much of an emotional punch as the original, but it’s nice to see the story evolve. I wish the little boy the human couple had adopted had been featured, as they definitely adopted him and it’s weird that he’s just excluded from this film. How many years did it take Blu and Jewel to have kids? The kids are cute, though I mean they’re kind of forgettable. I don’t know there names. Destructive boy, hip daughter, nerd daughter. Kind of a classic spread honestly.

There’s some inclusion of beloved side characters from the original, though their contribution, and Nigel is somehow back. Which, unfortunately, takes away from the villain of the piece. Is Nigel the one we should be worried about, or the evil logging company owner? I think the logging company owner is meant to provide a bigger threat, and they just wanted to include Nigel cause he’s a fun character, but I think including Nigel – while leading to some laughs – weakens the message of the movie.

And what is that message? The Amazon jungle should be protected. Plain and simple. I agree. It’s not going to be, and not enough is being done for it to be, but it should be. Again, making it an environmental message makes the film more cookie cutter and less emotional, even if the environmental message is an important one.

All in all, I’ve definitely seen worse movies, some of them even made by this animation studio, and the film was still just as fun and full of colour and life as the original. It’s not one I’ll really put on randomly the same way I might for Rio, but it doesn’t hurt the original, and, again, it’s nice to give my son something, anything, else to watch.