“Never send a monkey to do a bird’s job!” This cawed snippet of dialogue pretty much sums up everything both weird and wonderful in Rio , the story of a domesticated macaw who returns to his native Brazil to learn how to fly. To begin, the film features an odd blend of characters. Most animated tales that take place in a place and time recognizably like our Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. There are exceptions, such as Bee Movie Rio Blu the macaw (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg in full neurotic New Yorker mode) is a native of Brazil who, is owning it .Enter Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro), an ornithologist with an apparently unlimited budget. He tracks down Blu in Moose Lake (an actual city!) and persuades Linda to accompany him back to Brazil, where he hopes the bird will mate with Jewel (Anne Hathaway), the only other remaining member of the species.Cut to Rio de Janeiro, which has been lovingly CG’d from the sidewalks of Copacabana Beach to the statue of Christ the Redeemer, with a few dirt-poor favelas thrown in for good measure. But before Blu and Jewel can get busy with the business of repopulation, they are bird-napped by a trio of thieves so inept they make the Home Alone crooks look like Navy SEALs. Now, I don’t know if I’m being overly sensitive, but there seems to be a weird, almost subliminal strain of racism in a movie that paints Brazilians as a nation of soccer-mad, carnival-crazy, lamé-wearing, bad-(Volkswagen)-driving bird traffickers. And those are the good guys! The local fauna, meanwhile, are mostly American, voiced by the likes of Will.i.am, Jamie Foxx, Tracy Morgan and George Lopez. Lopez has become Hollywood’s go-to guy for ethnic animated characters in Marmaduke. The biggest casting departure is New Zealand’s Jemaine Clement (TV’s Flight of the Conchords as the voice of Nigel, a cockatoo of dubious origin and nasty disposition. He helps the bad guys track down and capture (and re-capture) the macaws, whose escape is hampered by the fact that Blu never learned how to fly. Also, Jewel yearns for the freedom of the forest, whereas Blu would rather be back in Linda’s loving care. Oh, and they’re chained to each other like convicts in a ’70s prison movie. The result is a headlong series of chases that involve (at various stages) hang gliders, a slobbery bulldog (Morgan’s character), text-savvy marmosets, flamingos, toucans, motorcycles and Carnival floats. Along the way our protagonists (both human and avian) will inevitably fall for each other, signaled just as inevitably by the animated-film shorthand of dilated pupils and sudden slow-motion. Honestly, kids raised on these movies will one day confuse the effects of marijuana with true love. For now, however, they can relax in the familiar cocoon of wisecracking wildlife and a sliver of morality: Captivity is bad! (Unless done in the name of conservation. Or if the animal really wants it.). The birds of Rio 2 almost knocked Captain America: The Winter Soldier off of his box-office perch over the weekend. Ultimately, the Marvel standalone adventure held on to the top slot, but the animated comedy still banked a healthy $39 million. That is exactly what the first Rio earned in 2011, and that film went on to bank $484 million worldwide. So far, Rio 2 has global grosses of $163 million. That’s an incredible start. Does this mean that Rio 3 is inevitable? Probably. Director Carlos Saldanha has dabbled in sequels over the years, having helmed three Ice Age movies and a second Rio film. During the recent world premiere in Miami, Florida, I sat down with the cast of Rio 2to ask them where they’d want Rio 3 to go. The beautiful thing about animation is that there are no boundaries. The sky is the limit as to where (and even when) a potential sequel could go. Jamie Foxx might have been inspired by the location of the press stop. When I asked him where he wanted the birds of Rio to go in a possible Rio 3 , he told me, “They have to come to Miami.” Andy Garcia, who voices the paternal bird Eduardo in the sequel, also said that he’d like to see the Blue Macaws of Saldanha’s series “take a field trip” in Rio 3 . .In that final scene, Hailey finally opened up to Jay about why she spiraled throughout the episode, starting when he dropped the first “I love you” of the Upstead relationship. Hailey seemed somewhat surprised that he came over at all at the end when she called, after she spent most of the episode shutting down on him (not to mention bending the rules on the case) without letting him in on why those three little words had such a negative effect on her.