Rio

Rio is one of those movies that I had heard about but never got around to watching until recently.  Everyone told me how great it was so I had very high expectations.  I must say that the first time we watched it I was a little disappointed.  However Liam got into it more and more to the point that he kept asking for it, once we sent it back to Netflix.  Finally I conceded and we found it on sale and bought it.  The more that we watched it the more that it grew on me.  I definitely love the music and the bright colors.  There are a lot of big stars doing voices.  I love that the main character is kind of dorky and out of his element.

If you aren't familiar with Rio it is about a Blue Macaw that was a black market smuggled bird.  He ends up with a loving owner in Minnesota and lives his life domesticated, never learning to fly.  He is the only known documents male left of his species and so he must embark on a journey to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in order to help populate his species.  The crazy adventure begins there.  The story is cute and the characters are unique from ones that we have seen in the past.

Rio came out in 2011 and connected the main character Blu (the male blue Macaw) with his female counterpart Jewel.  His owner is named Linda and lives her life around Blu as a bookstore owner in Minnesota.  Tulio is the ornithologist who finds them in Minnesota to bring Blu to mate with Jewel.



Rio was released in 2011 by Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age) as a 3D Computer animated musical-adventure-comedy.  It was directed by Carlos Saldanha.  Originally the concept was for a penguin to wash ashore to Rio.  But when the concept was being developed in 2005, Happy Feet and Surf's Up were also coming out.  This caused Saldanha to change the concept from a penguin to a blue macaw.  The film was considered a box office success grossing over $484 million worldwide.  It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song for "Real in Rio."  Originally Neil Patrick Harris was approached to voice Blu, but due to other obligations he had to pass and Jesse Eisenberg was selected to voice Blu.  Originally the film was given a PG rating for "mild off-color humor."  Due to the target audience being children, it caused the film to be edited and re-submitted to the MPAA in order to achieve a G rating.  The release of Rio caused Pixar to cancel the 2012 release of their movie Newt due to similarities in the plotline. 

The amazing voice talents of Rio include:
Blu voiced by Jesse Eisenberg (Social Network, Zombieland, Adventureland)
Linda voiced by Leslie Mann (This Is 40, Funny People, Knocked Up, Big Daddy)
Tulio voiced by Rodrigo Santoro (Xerxes in 300,  Love Actually)
Jewel voiced by Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables, Dark Night Rises, Bride Wars, Devil Wears Prada)
Nico& Pedro (Friends of Jewel) voiced by Jamie Foxx & Will.I.Am (From the Black Eyed Peas)
Rafael (Toucan) voiced by George Lopez (the Comedian)
Luiz (A Bulldog) voiced by Tracy Morgan (30 Rock, Cop Out)
You also get cameos from Wands Sykes and Jane Lynch etc.

Overall I give this film a 4 out of 5.  It definitely grows on you and you learn to love it more and more but initially you don't feel that it is the greatest film that you have ever seen.  The animation is done beautifully and you get to know a lot of characters individually.  Rio 2 is set to be released in April of 2014.  I definitely recommend checking it out if you have never seen it, and giving it a second chance if it didn't stick with you the first time you saw it.

Frozen

This was the first movie that Liam ever saw in the theater.  Grandma was here and insisted on taking Liam to his first movie, and auntie Shayna came along as well.  I was very worried about Liam going to see a movie and actually sitting still through it at his age (he is three in case you don't know).  He actually did remarkably well...  Now as far as the movie selection, the big Disney movie showing at that time was Frozen.  It started off kind of awkward with the new revival initiative of Disney to try to add on snippets of old black and white Mickey cartoons at the beginning of movies.  Now Disney makes a living on mostly children's movies, and in so doing you think they would have picked a bit more of a tasteful excerpt.  Instead we had a cow flashing her udders and someone kidnapping and trying ti simulated take advantage of Minnie Mouse....  Now I didn't have a problem seeing it myself, but I did think that Disney studios have to know the society of parents and children right now and that it probably wasn't the greatest choice to show before a kid's movie....  With that being said let's move on to the actual movie.
Frozen is about two sisters Anna & Elsa.  Elsa is the elder sister and has a magic with ice, winter, snow.  This is something that can be used by evil if anyone were to find out and so her parents force her to hide it from everyone so that no one will ever be hurt, forcing her to look herself away while growing up.  Anna is the littler sister that has no idea why her sister is locking herself away and is spending her life being lonely.  When Elsa accidentally released some of her power on her coronation she runs away leaving Anna to fend for herself.  Anna only wants to find love and to have her sister as a friend, so they set out on a treacherous journey with unlikely allies in an attempt to save her sister and her kingdom.

Voices featured in this movie:
Anna is voiced by Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, Sarah Marshall, Gossip Girl)
Elsa is voiced by Idina Menzel (Rent, Enchanted, Glee, wife of Taye Diggs)
Kristoff (an unlikely ally) is voiced by Jonathan Goff (Glee)

Frozen is a 3D computer animated musical fantasy comedy movie.  It was released in 2013 and is the 53rd Disney movie to be released.  It is loosely based on the story the Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson, which may explain why it has a bit of an older feel to it.   So far is has grossed $764 million worldwide and has won several awards.  The awards won include Golden Globe & Critic's Choice for Best Animated Feature as well as Critic's Choice award for Best Original Song for "Let It Go" also sung by Idina Menzel.  Frozen became Fandango's top advance ticket seller among animated features beating out Brave.  It is the 4th highest grossing 2013 film.


Disney has been looking at producing their version of the Snow Queen since the 1940s but had trouble getting the story to a place where they felt that the audience could relate to it.  They had a hard time modernizing it and trying to lighten up an originally dark and seemingly inhumane story.  One main way in which this happened was by making Anna & Elsa sisters.  In the late 1990s Disney picked the story back up and worked on it for almost a decade before it was scrapped again in 2002.  In 2008 a new idea with the film was pitched by director Chris Buck under the title of Anna & the Snow Queen with plans to use traditional animation and portray the Snow Queen as light-hearted as opposed to a villain, but by early 2010, there were again complications with making the story work.  In December of 2011 after the success of Tangled Disney decided to again pick up the story and move forward with 3D and a new development team.  With the character Anna now being written by Chris Buck as the Snow Queen's little sister they were able to show new dimensions in the relationships of the characters while subtracting a lot of the darkness away from the story.  Jennifer Lee (one of the screenwriters from Wreck-It-Ralph) was brought onto the team.  Her work and involvement became so involved and extensive that she ended up being promoted from screenwriter to songwriter and pre-devlopment and was brought up to director alongside Chris Buck.  This was a major accomplishment as in all of these years Jennifer Lee became the first woman to direct a full-length animated motion picture by Walt Disney Animation Studios. 

Frozen had a very nice clear and crisp picture.  It was definitely a musical and seemed like there were more songs than dialogue.  The songs were quite pretty though and easy to sing along.  I did however feel that the theme of the movie was more directed at the tweens-pre-teen age group as opposed to the younger crowd.  There wasn't much for a young child to relate to like there is in some Disney movies.  Liam was definitely enthralled with the snowman Olaf and I myself found Sven the reindeer to be the best character in the movie.  I did notice that with the older theme, that when the sister Anna finds her independence and possibly older, slightly darker stage that her whole appearance changed, her hair was now in a messed braid instead of in a tight orderly braid, and she was wearing a lower cute almost sheer dress, it was definitely showing that becoming darker is sexier and more appealing...  but perhaps I was reading too much into it.  On a positive note it did a great job of showing the independence of women and was the first Disney film to question a woman marrying a man that she just met.  There was the grand theme that true love comes in many forms.  My adult self sees Disney movies in a different light and as a mother knowing how much every little detail is sponged into the minds of youth.  Overall I give this film 4 out of 5 stars.  I would give it 5 stars because it had great songs and great characters, but it seems like there were a lot of holes in the story and if given more time it could have told more about the story instead of just touching upon elements such as Anna's power and the Trolls.

You can visit Disney's Official Site here: Frozen

I suggest not watching this hilarious unnecessarily censored video of excerpts from the movie unless you have seen it already,  It could ruin it for you.

Oliver & Company

I always loved Oliver & Company as I was growing up.  With Liam's continued request to watch Bolt again and his love of dogs and cats I was sure that he would love this movie.  Unfortunately from the very beginning he was seriously not feeling this movie.  He kept begging me to change it and he did not feel very engaged by it at all.  In his defense it wasn't as good as I had remembered.  There was a serious lack of action in terms of current Disney movies.  The coloring and backgrounds were not as bright or interactive as most movies are now and it had the older animation.  The story was more adult-based themes rather than something that Liam could really get into and was over his head.  I of course still watched the entire thing and was happy that I had.  I was sad that it wasn't as awesome as I had remembered, but it was still good and worth watching.  Still had some catchy tunes with  a great voice staff, a few cameos and  of course the voice talent of the late Dom Deluise making you want to go back to Itchy in All Dog's go to Heaven and Tiger in An American Tale and Jeremy in the Secret of NIMH and Stanly from A Troll in Central Park.....

Olive & Company is loosely based on the story of Oliver Twist.  Oliver is a kitten and gets in with a gang of dogs, led by Dodger who are owned by a down on his luck guy named Fagin.  Fagin borrowed money from a thug (possible mafia ties) who is wanting his money back in 3 days.  The gang goes out to hustle for some money for their owner when the come across a limo with a little girl inside named Jenni who takes Oliver home with her.

Oliver is an orange tabby kitten voiced by Joey Lawrence.
Dodger is a apparently supposed to be a Jack Russell Terrier, which I did not know until I looked this up.  If that is true, he is drawn disproportionately with the rest of the characters as he should be much smaller than he is in comparison with the other dogs.  He is voiced by Billy Joel
Tito is a ballsy Chihuahua voiced by Cheech Marin
Rita is a Saluki, and Dodger's love interest voiced by Sheryl Lee Ralph
Fagin is the owner of the dog gang and voiced by Dom Deluise
Georgette is a prizewinning show Poodle and is voiced by Better Midler

Oliver & Company was released in 1988 as Disney's 27th animated film.  The working title of the film was Oliver & the Dodger.  At a certain point this film was being tailored as a sequel to The Rescuers.   This was the first Disney film to make heavy use of computer animation.  CGI (computer generated imagery) was used for skyscrapers, cars, trains, the chase scene with Fagin's scooter.  This film signified the first time the Disney had created an actual department dedicated just to computer animation. 

Oliver & Company was Disney's test film back into the musical venue that they had steered away from since 1981 with the Fox & the Hound (somehow I don't recall the Fox & the Hound being much of a musical).  Although after watching Frozen, I think that Disney may have gone too far into the musical scene and lost actual speaking to tell a story ;)  After the success of this film at the box office, Disney created all of it's films as musicals for the next decade (ironically only excluding The Rescuers Down Under). 

This movie was also a test for new sound effects that would regularly be used by Disney studios, the next movie to attempt a plethora of new sound effects was The Little Mermaid in 1989.  It was also the first animated film to include real-world advertised products.  Such as, Coca-Cola, USA Today, Ryder and Sony.  Reportedly this was merely for realism and the mass amount of advertising in NYC that would have made NYC unbelievable without advertising and was not product placement. 

Cameo appearances are made in the beginning of the film when after recently watching the Lady & the Tramp I thought for sure I had seen some familiar faces and was just losing my mind.  When in fact there is a cameo appearance from Peg, Jock & Trusty as well as an appearance from Pongo from 101 Dalmatians. 

Oliver & Company was released on the exact same day as The Land Before Time which was released by Don Bluth (a Disney expatriate).  I am sure there was some drama going on behind the scenes with that one.  The box office success of the movie lead Disney to make plans to release at least one movie annually from then on.  The only years thus far this has not happened were 1993 and 2006.  It also started the partnership with McDonald's and joint licensing and product promotion with christmas musical ornaments of Oliver & Dodger.  Despite box office success it got mixed to low reviews at best.

My final review on this movie is a 3.9.  I still love it from when I was a kid but it can't quite push itself over to a 4.  I still love the Why Should I Worry (main theme song sung by Billy Joel) and am happy that I got to see it again. 

*If you watch closely you can see Pongo's cameo

If you want to see the Disney Link go to Oliver & Company