New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Bruce Hall: I'm with Jason on wanting to focus on the international business. Stateside the emphasis is on how the weekend gross is eerily similar to the first movie. But am I alone in thinking that's Rio 2's least significant accomplishment?? How many of us were expecting more than this? In fact, had the take been $29 million instead of $39, everyone would be saying "Well, you know what they say about sequels." Instead, Rio 2 neatly matched its predecessor domestically, and is outpacing the previous film's international debut by a wide margin.

I don't think anyone, anywhere is losing any sleep over this tonight.

Kim Hollis: I guess this feels mildly disappointing to me. While I realize that they’re effectively just making Rio films to play to a more international audience, I find myself wondering why they couldn’t give us a good story to go along with the pretty pictures and perhaps expand to a larger audience. I’m not saying that the opening would really have been any different, but perhaps they could have had an extended run in North American theaters with good word-of-mouth. We’ve seen time and time again that people respond to quality in animation, after all. Now, they’re going to do “well enough” and yes the movie will make money, but it’s a throwaway, forgettable project that no one’s going to be talking about in a month or two – just like the Ice Age films.

Max Braden: Anecdotally, this number feels surprisingly low to me. My impression of kids’ reactions to the first Rio is that it's one of the big home video hits in recent years. I thought the ads looked impressively similar to the original (versus the wild detour of Cars 2). Both those factors led me to believe that the Rio 2 opening would be significantly larger than it was. On the other hand, I didn't see a lot of advertising and kept forgetting that this was being released. I just think that if it had been pushed a little more, kids might have been clamoring more to see it.

David Mumpower: I'm going to directly counter Max here as well as everybody else who has replied thus far by asking a simple question. What do you remember about Rio? Assuming you have seen the movie, is there a single aspect of it that you find identifiable?

I am not querying people to be difficult, either. I own a 3D Blu-Ray of Rio that I have watched multiple times. I also own Rio on Ultraviolet, and I think it is telling that I had to search Vudu to verify that this is the case. I thought I did but I was not 100% sure, which forces me to re-assess the intelligence of that purchase.

Rio is an absolutely breathtaking visual achievement. I honestly believe it is in the conversation for the most visually stimulating animated movie ever made. The problem is that by describing Rio as vanilla, we insult the flavor of vanilla. It is at least distinguishable in some regard. Rio as a story lacks that sort of individuality.

I say all of this to point out that while several recent animated sequels have disappointed mightily, Rio 2 matched its predecessor in spite of the quality of that movie. I believe we should acknowledge the triumph of that even as we direct people to follow the international revenue in order to gauge the true success of the project.

Continued:       1       2