Birds don't have to be of a feather to squawk together, as it is evident by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky 3D flick, Rio. This is the movie with the massive Angry Birds tie in and after having played the game, it's fun to look for elements of the game in the movie.
The plot of the movie is simple. A fledgling blue macaw is taken away from his roots in the Brazilian rainforest and through a set of accidents, ends up as a pet to a girl, Linda, in Minnesota. The macaw, named Blu, grows up as a pet and never learns to fly.
He is shown to enjoy his life. Around 15 years later, an ornithologist, Tulio visits Linda's bookstore saying that there's only one other blue macaw in the world and it's a female. They're holding her in a lab in Rio de Janeiro. He wants Blu to come down to Rio, and, you know, repopulate the macaw planet. By the way, the blue macaw is the bird you unlock in the first world of Angry Birds Rio and fight with in the last level of the second world.
This is where the trouble begins. Calm, peaceful life in Minnesota ends and the bustling, samba-ing, trouble making adventure in Rio begins. The blue macaws, while shoved in an enclosure to do their thing, get stolen by a bunch of smugglers. This was aided by a traitor bird in the ornithology center who had been working for the smugglers the whole time. This white bird is the same bird you see and fight in the last level of the world Jungle Escape in the Angry Birds game.
The blue macaws manage to escape and with the help of a toucan (not in Angry Birds), a red crested cardinal (small red bird in Angry Birds) and a yellow canary (zoomer bird in Angry Birds), they set out to try to find Linda and Tulio. Of course, crazy villain white bird hasn't given up trying to get the macaws back for the smugglers and engages the help of gold digging marmosets (think almost King Julian from Madagascar but evil) to find and get the birds. These marmosets are what you kill in Jungle Escape in Angry Birds Rio.
Being set in Rio, the movie cannot overlook Carnivale of course. Carnivale is used as the backdrop for the ultimate showdown between the macaw loving humans and the smugglers. The climax of the scene and basically of the movie (spoiler alert!) has Blu being able to fly, Blu and female macaw falling in love, Linda and Tulio falling in love and all of them permanently hanging out in Brazil.
Watching the movie, as mentioned earlier, not only was it fun to look for Angry Birds Rio elements but also to guess what the upcoming levels will contain. There needs to be a tribute to the bulldog whose drool helped the blue macaws out of their chain, a tribute to Carnivale where floatillas act as barriers between the Angry Birds and the villains and finally toucans have to be redone in Angry Birds Rio. The toucan in the regular Angry Birds game is the boomerang bird which turns around when you tap the screen. The toucans in the movie have some way more awesome moves. Rovio needs to rebrand the toucan to bring out the awesome that they have in the movie.
I'd say that Rio is a very well done movie and though the storyline is very simple and obvious, it's an enjoyable movie to watch. Of course, what will make it better is if you've played the game before. If you do watch or have watched the movie already, let us know your guesses
for upcoming worlds in the Angry Birds Rio game in the comments section below.
for upcoming worlds in the Angry Birds Rio game in the comments section below.