Blu, Jewel and their three kids living the perfect domesticated life in the magical city that is Rio de Janeiro. When Jewel decides the kids need to learn to live like real birds, she insists the family venture into the Amazon. As Blu tries to fit in with his new neighbors, he worries he may lose Jewel and the kids to the call of the wild. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Leslie Mann and others
Blu, Jewel and their three kids living the perfect domesticated life in the magical city that is Rio de Janeiro. When Jewel decides the kids need to learn to live like real birds, she insists the family venture into the Amazon. As Blu tries to fit in with his new neighbors, he worries he may lose Jewel and the kids to the call of the wild. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, Jake T. Austin and others
Perhaps I'm just weird about certain things but I don't like movies about illusionists. Thing that annoys me about them is that they can make things as crazy as they want, without having to explain anything. And yes, this movie also features all sort of implausible magic tricks in it. It feels like cheating! It should be a law, that when you decide to do a movie about illusionists, you are only allowed to use actual magic tricks and no 'movie magic'.
But besides all of that, this movie has plenty of other problems in it as well. The premise actually still sounded kind of nice and promising to me but I was absolutely annoyed and disappointed by the way certain things played out.
It believes that keep pulling rabbits out of the hat and stack surprise upon surprise, equals being a clever and surprising movie. But more often than not, things just don't add up too well. It's a typical example of a movie that thinks it's being more clever than it in fact truly is. As a matter of fact, the movie is a very lazily written one in some regards. It mostly relies on coincidences and other conveniences for its story. When looking back at this movie, you have to agree on it that certain things just don't make any sense or add up too well, no matter whether you liked the overall movie or not.
And it still is a very easy movie to like. I mean, sure, it's an entertaining one to watch. It has a constant fast pace and some fine actors, that help to keep you interested in the movie, all throughout. It's not the fun heist movie I expected it to be but it certainly is not without its entertainment.
Thing that still at the same time annoys me about its pace is that it's trying to go to fast at times. Sometimes the camera literally can't stand still and it keeps swirling all over the place, even when not an awful lot is happening. No, I'm not talking about shaky cam but swirly cam...shaky cam's lesser known but far more annoying cousin!
Guess you could say that the foremost thing this movie has going for it, is its cast. Not all characters are equally likable but the actors playing them still give a fine performance. I particularly liked Mark Ruffalo and Woody Harrelson in this movie.
Really, calling this movie a terrible one would be crazy in my opinion. It actually, despite everything, still succeeds to bring some entertainment, some good snappy type of dialog and fine performances by its cast. I just wasn't too fond of its story however and the way certain things played out.
Blu, Jewel and their three kids living the perfect domesticated life in the magical city that is Rio de Janeiro. When Jewel decides the kids need to learn to live like real birds, she insists the family venture into the Amazon. As Blu tries to fit in with his new neighbors, he worries he may lose Jewel and the kids to the call of the wild. From: IMDb.com
Directed by: Carlos Saldanha
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Leslie Mann, Jamie Foxx and others
A typical Woody Allen movie in about every way but yet you can't really
call it one of his best ones really.
Typical for some Allen movies, it's not just following one or two main
characters but instead a whole bunch of them, this time all set in
Rome, Italy. And that's is a bit of a problem for this particular
movie.
When you have many different characters, you also have many different
story lines. It's a very hard thing to keep each individual storyline
interesting and fun enough all throughout and to give each separate
storyline just as much care and attention as the other. Well, in this
case not every storyline works out very well really and the movie most
likely would had been better off with one or two story lines less.
Besides, it's not like it's all connected and everything that happens
in this movie is serving a significant enough purpose, for the movie as
a whole. As a matter of fact, it at times feels like some of the story
lines aren't really going anywhere and also not everything gets wrapped
up satisfactorily.
Because of its story and way of storytelling the movie also feels
overlong, despite the fact that the movie is well under 2 hours short.
It really does feel much longer though, which is never a good sign.
It's not like the movie ever looses its focus or starts to drag. It's
more that the movie does not always succeeds at being interesting and
engaging enough with its different story lines and characters involved.
Despite everything, I still enjoyed the movie for what it was though. I
mean, it's still cute and has a good, pleasant, atmosphere to it. It's
definitely still entertaining enough, mostly due to its fine written
comedy, by of course Allen himself.
Woody Allen also once more stars in this movie and I'm glad he does.
There was basically no good reason for him to stop appearing in his
movies and watching him act and often playing the same type of
character over and over again often is the highlight of the movie. Most
comedy from this movie actually probably still comes from his character
as well and he definitely is a welcome addition to the long and
impressive cast-list of this movie, with other actors such as Alec
Baldwin, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penélope Cruz and Roberto Benigni
involved.
It's nothing too great or impressive but it's definitely still one fine
movie to watch for instance on a rainy afternoon and you want to
entertained by something harmless and light.
