Blu-ray Review: Rio 2 (2014)

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Rio (2011)

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Blue Sky Studios’ globally-minded musically driven 3D CG-animated adventure movie Rio brought its aptly named Blue Macaw Blu and his bookish owner Linda (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg and Leslie Mann respectively) from Minnesota to the titular Rio in the infectious 2011 original that enchanted viewers with its high-spirited energy and fast moving storyline which danced at a steady Samba pace.

Unfortunately while it’s as beautifully vibrant as ever in a visually breathtaking opener that once again feels like it's an animated half-pint version of the Carnival classic Black Orpheus, the second film is an undeniably busy, ambitiously overstuffed and disappointingly episodic return to the delightful high-flying world of Rio.

Strategically released to coincide with the World Cup, Rio 2 incorporates a soccer fueled scene that’s – like everything else in the film – ratcheted up a million degrees so that it’s storyboarded less like a regular match and more like a spectacular Harry Potter styled aerial game of Quidditch.

And despite its pro-nature message about preserving the Amazon Rainforest (as well as the endangered birds in another through-line admirably carried over from the first film), far too much gets lost in the shuffle of individually isolated “scenes” in a movie that ultimately lacks the cohesive focus of a well-conceptualized whole.

As Rio 2 begins, we check back in with the paired off lovebirds (Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway) from the original as the couple and their three young flappers leave Rio behind before flying into acquaintances both new and old in the sequel’s dominated Rainforest setting.

Essentially a feathered version of Meet the Parents for the small set, in Rio 2, Hathaway’s Jewel is stunned to discover that the family she’d long thought to have been deceased is alive and well in her old Amazon home.

While indulging in his opportunity to play the Robert De Niro like Parents heavy, voice actor Andy Garcia is clearly having a ball as Jewell's long lost father who takes an immediate dislike and disapproval to Blu by admonishing him as a mere “pet.” However, the biggest surprise is musician Bruno Mars, who steals several scenes in an often screamingly funny role as a childhood friend who still clearly carries a torch for Jewel.

Burning through subplot and supporting characters (including a return of the first film’s fan favorite Jemaine Clement who’s now partnered with Kristin Chenoweth), from its snappy one-liners to obligatory pop songs and brightly colored, firework-fast diversions, Rio 2’s key takeaway about preserving plant and animal life on Earth gets pushed into the periphery.

Sloppily written, the film shortchanges its talented cast and expectant audience alike with a collection of sitcom level scenes edited together with a few eye-opening epic moments (such as the aforementioned opener) buried in between in order to satisfy the shortest of attention spans.

A pleasant enough diversion for your tiniest tots especially given the multiple format combo pack release which boasts a Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy, director Carlos Saldanha’s effort works better than a majority of run of the mill fare like The Nut Job.

And likewise given the studio's dedicated to discovering new topics, techniques, and terrain (even by way of a preexisting template), it is a stronger than average follow-up as far as animated movies go.

Nonetheless there’s still no beating the South American spirit of Blu’s original opus that showed ticket-buyers that outside of the frozen tundra of the impressive Ice Age franchise, Blue Sky has a bright future ahead of them in the sun.

   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: 17 Again (2009)

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Despite the fact that he hasn't yet reached the age where he'd be receiving a five year high school reunion invitation in the mail, even Zac Efron confesses that if he had the chance to be seventeen again he wouldn't do it. While it's hard to imagine that somebody who looks like a walking Gap ad would have felt awkward in high school, I'm assuming you could attribute his reluctance to the fact that Efron is most famous for spending a good majority of his career onscreen in that exact environment whether it was in Hairspray or the internationally successful High School Musical series.

And sure enough, in 17 Again, there Zac is again in high school and although the beginning of the movie directed by Burr Steers is set in 1989, when he dribbles a basketball and dances around, we start having HSM deja vu. However, the film is not Disney and G but Warner Brothers and PG-13 for a reason as we learn that Efron's star basketball player Mike O'Donnell has impregnated his girlfriend Scarlet.

Walking off the court at the start of the game and the film to go after the girl he loves instead of impressing college scouts with his athleticism and chance at a scholarship, Efron's Mike evolves over the course of twenty years to become the bitter thirty-seven year old walking bummer played by Matthew Perry.

A chronic complainer who is dissatisfied with his lot in life, when we're acquainted with the adult version of Mike we discover that he's unable to connect with his now high school age son Alex (Streling Knight) and daughter Maggie (Gossip Girl's Michelle Trachtenberg) and that his marriage to the understandably frustrated Scarlet (Funny People's Leslie Mann) is quickly approaching divorce.

And as he's essentially regretted every move he's made since he walked off that basketball court to follow Scarlet, Bringing Down The House screenwriter Jason Filardi falls into an unfortunate trap by making Mike an amazingly unlikable guy right from the start. Thus, by presenting us with the stuck-in-a-rut sad sack who Matthew Perry tries to humanize the few minutes he's onscreen, we realize that no matter how much Efron does later in the movie, it's going to be hard to root for this guy. And it's especially problematic since he's given a misogynistic subtext by stereotypically blaming the girl for the pregnancy instead of thinking about what she's given up as well.

Still fortunately, we don't have to deal with adult Mike for very long as 17 Again stumbles into a body transformation construct when Mike is granted the opportunity to become age seventeen again for a chance at a do-over except it's not 1989 but now 2009. While it's definitely a formulaic retread of the far more enjoyable films Freaky Friday, Big, and 13 Going On 30 with a few of the elements of Never Been Kissed and The Family Man added into this familiar concoction, it's Efron who ends up carrying the movie on his shoulders and adds an unexpected amount of warmth to the work. To this end, sadly about midway through the 102 minute movie I realized that the only time we felt that the character of Mike actually had a heart was when he was played by Efron.

Obviously this isn't the fault of the most talented veteran of the Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Friends cast-mate Matthew Perry since he has so little screen time that basically his performance is a cameo but one that must've been present from the start in Filardi's screenplay. However, given this major of a detractor, Igby Goes Down filmmaker Burr Steers and his terrific cast are hampered before the movie even begins to play out but they try to distract us with enough charm, humor and magic to keep us watching.

Luckily they manage to succeed in making 17 Again a likable diversion that is given a nice touch of sweetness in a wonderful supporting performance by Leslie Mann who continually fights against her undeniable attraction to Efron's Mike since he bears an uncanny resemblance to her soon to be ex as a young man. As Efron tries to spend as much time as possible with Scarlet to begin to see her side of the story, he similarly uncovers more about his children by becoming friends with them at school which leads to some strange encounters as his daughter (talented pro Trachtenberg) mistakes the new boy's friendly interest as attraction and tries to seduce the guy who's technically her father in a scene that will creep you out to no end.

While Mann is arguably the movie's heart, the most consistent source of comedy can be found from actor Thomas Lennon (I Love You, Man) as Mike's wealthy computer genius best friend who reluctantly has to leave his life of Star Wars obsession and video games to pose as Mike's guardian and main ally who realizes that his friend has indeed transformed into his younger self. And sure enough although Reno 911! star Lennon gets the chance to deliver some of the best one-liners in the movie, his comedic success is doubled when he's paired onscreen with The Office's Melora Hardin who plays the beautiful principal that Lennon pursues nonstop which culminates in the strongest scene as the two unexpectedly bond during a dinner date.

Still ultimately, as a movie, it's Efron's world and the rest just live in it which isn't a criticism per se since he does a great job. For, having been distracted by the gorgeous Blu-ray presentation of this Warner Brothers release as well as the annoying problems with the sound balance that unevenly distributed background noise, music, and dialogue in a way that found me constantly warring with the remote, I essentially missed out on Efron's Matthew Perry-isms during my initial viewing.

Luckily these became far more apparent when taking in both the Zac-centric bonus material and when viewing key scenes the second time around. In addition to calling Perry to hear the talented man's line reading for some of his dialogue, Efron's preparation for the comedy went beyond just showing up with lines memorized and ready for the makeup and hair department to accentuate his chiseled features.

As we learn in one of the special features, by studying old Friends episodes to grasp not only Perry's unique cadences, pauses, and intriguing choice of words in a given sentence he decides to emphasize along with his physical mannerisms and tendency to half smile/smirk and routinely put his hands in his pockets, Efron's dedication to playing Perry is far more intriguing given the fact that Perry's role is quite small. Likewise it makes 17 Again worthy of a second viewing on this basis alone just to catch and better appreciate the nuances you may have missed especially if you were as fixated on the difference in facial structure and appearance as some critics were in their reviews.

However, those in their teens and tweens are wild about Zac so much that the 17 Again Blu-ray box is labeled "Packed With Zac! Over 30 Minutes More With Zac" since Warner Brothers which also produced the Emmy Award winning beloved Friends knows their core audience well. Nonetheless it was a wise choice made by Efron, producer Adam Shankman and director Burr Steers to pay homage to the adult version since he's not only more recognizable to a more diverse audience but it also gives Efron the chance to do more than dribble a basketball in high school a la HSM.

And although I'm greatly looking forward to seeing Efron in the upcoming Me and Orson Welles since he finally leaves high school behind in the preview that precedes the Blu-ray presentation, basically, aside from serving as a nice showcase for Efron away from musicals, sadly 17 Again's tired screenplay that cribs from so many other movies in the genre feels like it would've been far more appropriate as a Disney Channel, ABC Family or made for cable original movie.

Visually this Blu-ray marks a step up from some of the muted colors on display in earlier WB live-action releases like the recent straight to disc Spring Breakdown and additionally it boasts the cool and coveted (rare) WB bonus of a digital copy of the movie on a separate disc that doubles as a DVD, making it a 2-disc Combo Pack version of the 3-disc style ones consistently served up by Walt Disney Studios as evidenced in their previous Efron release High School Musical 3.

As previously mentioned, the sound problems distract from the work and Mike O'Donnell's character is not one we're that interested in since aside from the need for a flawed hero who must grow and change, Filardi forgot to ensure he was at least likable. However with a terrific fan rewarding Combo Pack, Warner Brothers manages to keep you amused via a 203 pop-up fact track of behind-the-scenes gossip, '80s info and more along with a BD Live only Zac commentary, the Mac and PC compatible digital file, DVD version, and other extras tailor made for their core audience with this slim-cased budget friendly Blu-ray release.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

Drillbit Taylor

Director: Steven Brill

Although the screenplay is credited to writers Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Kristofor Brown, the story for the newest offering from producer Judd Apatow was also credited to Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles writer/director John Hughes, who using the pseudonym of Edmond Dantes collaborated on this surprisingly cute offering from director Steven Brill. After having penned the three Mighty Ducks films before moving on to direct the uneven Adam Sandler comedies Little Nicky and Mr. Deeds, Brill does a great job of navigating Rogen and Brown’s alternately funny and heartfelt comedy about the horrors of high school that finds a trio of bullied kids looking to hire a bodyguard on the cheap to protect them from the daily beatings and humiliations they’ve come to expect in the hallways, bathrooms and grounds of their high school.

Eager to make an impression, adorably scrawny and insecure Wade (Nate Hartley) who struggles against his hyper masculine stepfather and brawny stepbrothers at home, decides that he wants nothing more than to be popular and obtain a girlfriend in his high school and he begins plotting out his proactive strategy with fellow geek Ryan (Troy Gentile), an overweight student with a passion for rap who has decided that he will go by the "lady-friendly" nickname of T-Dog. Unfortunately, the two make the spontaneously disastrous decision to wear the same shirt on the first day of school and after Wade intervenes in trying to stop two horrifying bullies from shoving young, small Emmit (David Dorfman) into a locker, they’ve not only inherited a new sidekick in Broadway t-shirt wearing Emmit (fond of Cats and Rent) but also in becoming the frequent targets of the merciless duo of villains that seem to allude the awareness of the clueless school faculty including their principal (Stephen Root). When desperation leads them to outsource protection, homeless army veteran and full time schemer Drillbit Taylor (Owen Wilson) arrives on the scene first with the intention of swindling the boys to earn enough cash to go to his desired destination of Canada who begins to realize he may be actually starting to care for the three lads, not to mention their gorgeous English teacher Lisa (Leslie Mann).

Although some of the dialogue and the violence near the end of the film felt a bit like overkill, I found myself surprised by the fact that I enjoyed the innocuous Taylor far more than I thought I would, despite being the first to admit that it falls into numerous films of the same underdog paradigm of most of the frat pack comedies of Will Ferrell and company over the last few years by Apatow but also the same Curly Sue, Home Alone and Ferris Bueller anti-authority works of the ever-talented Hughes as well. While the previews make the film appear that it’s Wilson’s show all the way and that the success of Drillbit Taylor depends solely on Wilson, similar to the way his films like You, Me and Dupree were marketed, the three young stars all manage to not only steal our hearts but also remind us of the dangers of high school and burden of bullies that overwhelmed us in our own educational career… that is, unless you were the ones doing the terrorizing.