It's hard for me not to like a movie that: A) takes place in an exotic tropical country B) has the protagonist sleeping with his dream girl after knowing her an hour, and C) has a happy ending. These qualities nearly compensate for the weaknesses of The Girl From Rio.
The plot of this Hollywood Film Festival winner is pedestrian and slack. You gotta like this Raymond guy, though.
Raymond (Hugh Laurie) is a bank clerk with a thoroughly unlikable boss, a cuckolding wife, and an endearing passion for Salsa dancing. Laurie's is the film's only real nuanced performance. No matter what he's saying or doing, his eyes betray him. His ubiquitous fear that the world is a dangerous and scary place has become his reality. It's clear, however, that beneath his pitifully polite and feckless British demeanor is a simmering frustration. Whatever you do, don't confuse Salsa with Bossa Nova. That makes Raymond really angry.
Raymond quietly endures his mostly comfortable life until, quite suddenly, the machinations of his wife and boss render him alone and disconsolate. A coworker commiserates, `It could be worse,' and Rodney does his best to prove his friend right by filling a duffle bag with all the bank's cash on Christmas Eve and hopping a flight to Rio de Janeiro.
Enter The Girl. `S' words come to mind. Sultry. Sensual. Sizzling. Steamy. Vanessa Nunes's Orlinda is a famous Brazilian Samba dancer whose mere picture fuels Raymond's first-class flight from sanity. Then it's this pesky plot stuff again. Paulo, the taxi driver (Raymond's seedy, hapless Sancho Panza) just happens to know Orlinda. They meet, they dance down a Brazilian calle accompanied by a thousand musicians and acolytes, they go to his room, they make love. As much as I was rooting for old Raymond, I felt vaguely ripped off.
Not nearly as ripped off as Raymond, however.
Everyone in this film has a secret. Raymond. Olinda. (`You're just a thief like me,' she tells him.) His boss. His wife. Paulo. Even the painfully anachronistic villain.
As I mentioned, everything turns out just fine. Even the obscene economic disparity of Rio (better portrayed in 1999's Orfeu) is corrected in authentic Robin Hood fashion.
Did I mention the villain? They made him carry a little dog.
