When I first lived in Pasadena, I knew a USC dental student who had two pregnant girlfriends and decided to run away, across the border with the one who wasn’t his fiancee. She was the one he eventually married. Perhaps they are still married, but I digress. When he came back to the Los Angeles area, he had smuggled two colorful birds.

Last year, a Garden Grove man was caught attempting to smuggle in 14 Asian songbirds strapped to his legs.

Bird smuggling is a business, a way for poor people to earn money, but it also pushes animals toward extinction as some bird die before them become commodities and the breeding populations are diminished.

This complicated problem is the topic of the animated feature “Rio” currently playing in Pasadena.

For people who understand Spanish, a movie named “Rio” is a movie called “River” but this movie isn’t about any river, including the Texas border defining Rio Grande (literally “big river”). This sixth Blue Sky Studios feature distributed by 21st Century Fox is about what happens in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro and the nearly extinct Spix Macaw and, of course, carnavale–the famous big street party.

This is an animal conservationist animation which gives lessons with a spoonful of sugar , very little preaching and a hip hop to Latin pop musical sensibility with the talents of the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am (William James Adams Jr.) and Academy and Grammy award winner Jamie Foxx in supporting voice roles.

The story centers on Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg), a Spix’s Macaw, who  as a baby bird is left alone by his parents and on his first attempt to fly is caught by bird smugglers. He ends up farm from the tropical rainforest–in Moose Lake, Minnesota as the pet of a bookstore owner named Linda (Leslie Mann).

An ornithologist (someone who studies birds), Tulio (Rodrigo Santoro)  comes to the bookstore, revealing that Blu is the last male of his species. As it happens, Tulio’s research center has the last female, Jewel (Anne Hathaway).

From here you can see this is following the traditional defrosting the WASP scenario. If we were in England, the place would be Italy or Spain. For Americans, it is Latin America. But besides Blu learning to listen to the rhythm of his heart, we have the animal in danger drama as well as the romance between Linda and Tulio.

Linda takes Blu to Rio de Janeiro, but unfortunately, Jewel isn’t interested in a flightless Macaw and wants to escape and return to the forest. Blu wants to be safe with his human. A Sulphur-crested Cockatoo named Nigel (Jemaine Clement) helps smugglers gain access to the the Spix’s Macaws, but Blu and Jewel escaped chained together.

In the jungle, Blu and Jewel meet Rafael (George Lopez), a Toco toucan with a family and he takes them to his friend Luiz (Tracy Morgan) to help remove the chain. On the way, they stop at a samba club where Blu and Jewel are aided by a Red-crested Cardinal (Will.i.am) and a canary, Nico (Jamie Foxx) when Nigel’s recruits, a small army of marmosets led by Mauro (Brian Baumgartner) attempt to take Blu and Jewel back to the smugglers.

Of course, this ends happily at a newly constructed Blu Bird Sanctuary. Even better, in reality the critically endangered Spix’s Macaw isn’t down to two adult mating birds. As of last year, there were 85 in captivity as currently they are no longer living in the wild.

“Rio” has a fairly predictable plot but it has good characterizations with a few surprises (Luiz) and a bit of the slime factor that kids seem to love (also Luiz). It aptly gives children an idea of the animal smuggling problem while promoting dance. How can that miss?

In addition, the director, Carlos Saldanha was born in Rio de Janeiro. Saldanha doesn’t neglect the problems of poverty and presents it in a way that is understandable to young children and yet, unlike some recent animations which caused an outcry the ethnic groups represented, isn’t patronizing or insulting to Brazilians.* This might explain why the American-made movie is also a hit in Brazil. Perhaps there are also in-jokes that we Americans can’t understand.

Saldanha was the co-director for the 2002 “Ice Age”  and the director for the 2006 “Ice Age 2: The Meltdown” and “Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.”

Oddly enough, the actual official website for the movie doesn’t really delve into the story of the Spix’s Macaw and the only featured activity is dance.

*Disney’s 1992 “Aladdin” was criticized by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Commitee.  The lyrics to “Savage” from the 1995 Disney animated feature “Pocahontas” have been criticized.