Movie review: More than flying lessons at Rio

We can only fly as far as Rio when we've discovered who we truly are.

It's a free flying lesson for all of us, as the creators of Ice Age took us to the magical Rio (directed by Carlos Saldanha) de Janeiro in Brazil to witness a biological and psychological imbalance in Blu, a rare blue macaw surviving as the last male species of his kind. The imbalance? He simply couldn't fly.

Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network), with his intellectual but not really practical language, is in a peculiar situation reflecting the Nature vs Nurture principle as well. We all know he'd been bird-napped by pouchers back in Rio, then domesticated by the modest, reserved librarian named Linda (Leslie Mann) in Minnesotta. He hadn't learned how to fly since then, and instead learned how to brush his teeth and read aerodynamics books just like a human being.

Feeding him with words of encouragement and advice--specially given by Rafael (George Lopez) and Pedro and Nico (Will.i.am and Jamie Foxx)--didn't seem to work out for our pathetic macaw, because it's always in his head that he couldn't do it even though it's perfectly his nature.

Somehow most of us can relate to Blu's frustrations, in times when we're afraid to step out of the box, thinking we're going to die if we do when in fact we were already missing a big part of our life by not taking such risks.

On the other hand, it brought us a lot of laughs in every stopover they took to get home. It nearly made me fall off my seat thinking how smart the monkeys were, especially when they were forced to act like top secret agents and perfectly knew how to send text messages from a touchscreen phone (message received: "Ooo Aaa Ooo Aaa"), and how humans could be dumb, with ornithologist named Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro ) who couldn't even drive a motorcycle.

It was creative of the movie creators to restore the musical atmosphere in a comedy animated film, highlighting the scenes when Rafael was trying hard to set the romantic mood for the lovebirds.

It perfectly suited Jesse Eisenberg to voice the wise-talking Blu, reflecting his character well back in The Social Network, and it was simply amusing he'd slowed down talking in the movie Rio.

We can only know how exceptional and amazing we are if we step out of our comfort zones and take the risks.