Rio: Animation of Hate

This movie is a slyly packaged anti-immigrant manifesto cleverly disguised as a cute cartoon for kids. It is a biting critique of the Anglicized Latino who has forgotten his roots, with sentiments echoing the real-life tensions between traditional culture and Americanization felt in immigrant communities, and between immigrants and those who stayed behind. At the end our hero, the immigrant bird "I'm too cool for the E" Blu, can achieve salvation only by returning not only to his cultural roots but to his actual home country, a thinly veiled assertion that immigrants should go back to where they came from. Undertones of colonialism can also be felt, such as when the poor little brown orphan boy must be saved by the white couple. George Lopez as the voice of the hen-pecked toucan is the ironic icing on this great big racist cake.