Girl from Rio

Dir: Christopher Monger

2001

*

As much as I love Hugh Laurie and as good as he is in Girl from Rio, he just can't save it from being an utter disappointment. On first glance it seems to trying to emulate the John Cleese comedies of the 80's, A Fish Called Wanda and Clockwise, as well as few others that in turn were inspired by the Ealing Comedies of the 40s and 50s. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near as funny or clever as either and it looked dated before it was even released. Christopher Monger had made the very sweet The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain five years before, so I was looking forward to seeing what he would do next and while the idea is sound and Hugh Laurie is on form, the rest of the cast are awful and the script is atrocious. The story of a disgruntled bank manager, who dreams of the samba and escaping his boring life, who finds out that his horrid boss is sleeping with his spiteful wife and robs his own bank and flees to Rio, should have been at least half interesting but it isn't, even in the slightest. It looks worse than a badly made for TV movie, more so by the fact that it must have been quite expensive to make. The initial idea, the setup of the story, is easily the best element of the film, why no one realized this and embellished it more shows a lack of creativity. Rio should have been the big star of the film but it wasn't, all the best bits were filmed in the stuffy old bank in London. A wasted opportunity without the laughs to make up for it, they don't make films like this anymore and for very good reason.