Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
It's a jungle out there for Blu, Jewel and their three kids after they're hurtled from Rio de Janeiro to the wilds of the Amazon. As Blu tries to fit in, he goes beak-to-beak with the vengeful Nigel, and meets the most fearsome adversary of all: his father-in-law.
Rio 2 is a fairly formulaic animated sequel that recycles the fish-out-of-water premise from the original but transplants it to the Amazon. The plot juggles too many subplots (Nigel's revenge, the logging conflict, family drama) without developing any of them particularly well, resulting in an unfocused narrative. Voice performances are competent and energetic from the returning cast. Cinematography and animation are vibrant and colorful, benefiting from the lush Amazon setting, though nothing technically groundbreaking. Novelty is low — it largely retreads the original's themes with a new backdrop and adds little distinctively new to the franchise or the genre. The ending resolves conflicts too neatly and predictably, consistent with the film's overall by-the-numbers approach.