Messages in Rio 2

During Rio 2, there was not much of s structure to the story line. As usual with being a sequel, there was not as much praise regarding this movie.  The vibrant colors of the different birds and sceneries made the surface of the movie extravagant. Then, following the structure of the film, the storyline did not capture my attention as much. I believe the only saving grace of the movie for keeping a child interested in and entertained during it is the vibrant colors and movements. There are potentially both positive and negative messages that could be pulled from this film, although I do not believe children would pick up on most of them. The negative messages are more so picked up by adults who may not want their kids exposed to such messages, although not easily detected by children.

Commonly with children’s films, a positive message to help the environment is somehow put into the film. With Rio 2, there are many different scenes that encourage general good care and respect of the environment. Starting off in the first ten minutes of the movie, two of the characters, Linda and Tulio, are in the Amazon Forest releasing a bird back into the wild. Linda is seen as one of the main characters that owned what they thought was the last of the rare Spix Macaw parrots. In both the first and second movie, Linda is portrayed as an environment friendly girl. A second Spix macaw parrot is found and put together with her parrot, Blu, and they now have a family, hoping to kick-start the species back into the wild. A subtle way the film encourages helping the environment is by making the colors vibrant and interesting. This can help kids understand and potentially question the actuality of the forest looking so pretty. Also this can help prove the point that helping save the environment can better the forest. Later on after the flocks of Spix Macaws are found in the forest, the race is on to stop loggers from cutting down the forest and destroying the homeland of these birds. Linda and Tulio, with the birds help as well, fight against the loggers attempting to cut down large areas of forest. Their fight against the loggers helps children see the potentially devastating effects it has on different species in the forest while they are seeing people taking action against logging. Environment education is becoming more and more necessary as industrialization occurs and this movie is a good representation of such for children.

Along with positive messages, negative messages can potentially be pulled from Rio 2. From the beginning of the movie, Blus children do not give him the respect he deserves as a father, as most people teach their children. The children declare that Blu always says no to them and does not let them do anything they would like to do. Blu justifies his response by declaring they must stay safe since they are the last of their kind. Although subtle and does not occur often in the movie, this scene is especially powerful in my view, to adults and children. With the kid birds attempting to do something potentially very dangerous and then being upset with their father and complaining about him saying no can negatively influence children.

With both positive and potentially negative messages in children’s films, some are more overt than plainly understood. I believe the negative message put out from the children disrespecting their father potentially has the most powerful effect on the target demographic, children, because of the lack of discipline rampant throughout America. If it is shown in movies and picked up by kids, the children are going to wonder why when they do the same thing it is wrong but they saw it in a movie where punishment was not put into place at the time of disrespect. In contrast, there are not many scenes portraying disrespect from the children and thus may be easily overlooked.