Squawk
Rio is the name of an animated movie that, near as I can tell from the previews they are showing on TV, has no plot other than the fact that a bunch of cheeky animals are hanging out together in Brazil. The movie doesn’t open until this weekend, but that hasn’t stopped 20th Century Fox from hooking up with McDonalds for a Happy Meal Promo. Finding out when the movie opens led me to another trailer where I learned the bird can’t fly, and he rides a skateboard in the movie.
Screen capture from a trailer.
This toy has a button that will make noise when pressed. Does it say something appropriate like “Squawk! Radical!”? Nope. It’s just nondescript music.
Watch this spot…
Actually, the blue parrot throws a mean 540 big spin on 0:26 of this here trailer, riding a toy car instead of a skateboard. Not too bad for a flyless bird.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDsvbki-3IM&feature=relmfu
The story line of him thinking he’s the last of his kind, escaping captivity when another ‘wild’ female is found, was apparently stolen from Pixar, as they were working on the same story before, but with geckos.
“stolen”….I’m not sure Pixar has the exclusive copyrights to a universal ‘Noah’s Ark themed’ story like that.
The big grey bird saying: “I’m not interested in your nicked knickknacks” could be a little sting towards Pixar,in reference to their short ‘Knick Knack’.
They’re just pissed because every time they go up for a Golden Globe or Oscar it always goes to a Pixar film,
…and rightfully so!
Well no, you can’t really copyright the concept… but there were apparently some announcements and such regarding Gecko before Rio even began… seems a bit dodgy… It’s been a few months and I can’t remember exactly how/why I ran across the discussion, but the more I read, the more I agreed that it was purposeful poaching.
An Angry Birds commercial.. crap.