Animated films are huge and often considerably less risky business, so of course Hollywood studios value a reliable property like the Ice Age franchise — with its worldwide box office haul of $2.8 billion, not even counting direct-to-home-video spin-offs — more than something like 2005’s Robots, which “only” grossed around $260 million on its $75 million budget.
The above point is worth underscoring since those films, produced by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox, are all directed or co-directed by Brazilian-born filmmaker Carlos Saldanha. Three years ago this very week, the family-friendly animated adventure Rio released, and became a $485 million surprise hit. Ergo, the impetus to carve out another comfortable gravy train hangs over and informs everything about the colorful, clamorous and entirely undemanding Rio 2. That means poop jokes in triplicate (hey, comedy comes in threes), as well as all other manner of easygoing song-and-dance, laughs and conflict resolution. For the full, original review, from Paste, click here. (20th Century Fox, G, 101 minutes)
