"Rio 2" (The Guardian 04/04/14)

Rio 2 **

Dir: Carlos Saldanha. With the voices of: Anne Hathaway, Jesse Eisenberg, will.i.am. 101 mins. Cert: U

The animators at Blue Sky Studios have form with converting wild beasts into domesticated cash cows: mammoths in their Ice Age series, now the macaws of 2011’s rather ordinary Rio. This wing-spreading sequel dispatches its lovebirds to the Amazon where, between dodging loggers, they encounter enough of their own kind to make a lie of the first movie’s premise. Jemaine Clement’s perfidious parakeet Nigel rises above the bland scripting, but it’s hard to ascribe much art or wit to a franchise that retains the services of will.i.am as comic relief – and a thoroughly inorganic talent-show subplot feels like another attempt to groom youngsters for life in the Cowell jungle. 

Rio 2 opens in cinemas nationwide today.