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91It's hot and sweet and made with inspiration and cheek. And it is not your children's animated fare -- which, in this case, is a recommendation.
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91The characters are simply rendered, but when it comes to capturing cities and scenes, the cinematography takes on the color and detail of a Mexican street mural.
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90This is definitely animation for grown-ups - its look is voluptuous, sexy and sultry; its Latin-inflected Dizzy Gillespie sound is seductive; and its story of young lovers whose passions are tested is timeless.
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90A dazzling and delightful work of modernist animation, a classic movie romance and a hip-swinging, finger-popping tale of musical revolution, Chico & Rita is the first big serendipitous surprise of 2012.
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90This is the kind of sophisticated storytelling you rarely get even in live-action movies any more, full of unexpected turns and unruly human complications.
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88When a place and its people are this stylish, we can't help but be drawn to them.
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88The music is terrific. Idania Valdes dubs Rita's sensuous, smoky singing voice, and the film is essentially constructed as a musical.
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88Chico and Rita beguiles first and foremost as a bebop romance that evokes a bygone era as well as, or maybe even better than, "The Artist."
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85The picture's real achievement though, is the warmth it brings to the music that animates the lives of these Afro-Cuban characters.
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83You've never seen anything like Chico & Rita, simply because that jubilant palette and likeminded jazz soundtrack embraces its predictability with such vitality.
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80It's called Chico & Rita, but their film could just as easily have been titled "Chico & Cuba." In both cases, it's a film are about a long-lost love, and in both cases it is steeped in such a pitch-perfect sense of place -- and affection -- that you can almost smell the cigar smoke as it unfolds.
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80Sexy, sweet and laced with a sadness at once specific to its place and time and accessible to anyone with a breakable heart, Chico & Rita is an animated valentine to Cuba and its music.
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80It's a pleasure to surrender to the movie's lush visuals, which are accompanied by wonderful jazz classics performed by Valdes, Estrella Morente, and Freddy Cole (Nat King Cole's brother), among many others.
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80A delightful blend of hand-drawn animation and CG style that'll be soul food for hopeless romantics everywhere.
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75Every decade or so, someone proves animation can tell a serious adult story.
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75An intoxicating, world-class collaboration between a filmmaker (Spain's Fernando Trueba), two artists (designer Javier Mariscal and animator Tono Errando) and a musician (Cuban pianist/bandleader Bebo Valdés).
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75The film boasts an original score by Cuban pianist and composer Bebo Valdés, who was featured in "Calle 54."
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Feb 9, 201275This sexy, pulpy, very grown-up film is not your usual best animated feature material.
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70The rudimentary 2-D animation doesn't allow for much character nuance, and the story isn't exactly fresh. But directors Fernando Trueba (Calle 54), Javier Mariscal, and Tono Errando conjure up some vibrant set pieces.
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Feb 7, 201270The result has only a loose resemblance to Valdés's story - though real-life figures including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo, and a Cuban songstress who bears some resemblance to Rita Montaner are featured as characters - but it's a dazzling thing to behold.
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63A likable but cliched star-crossed romance set along the post-WWII Havana-New York jazz axis, the Spanish-made film features terrific music, passable artwork, and characters who stubbornly refuse to become more than sketches.
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60The real romance here is between the filmmakers and the cultural moment they hope to document. From that perspective, it's a welcome - if not quite award-worthy - valentine.
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60The boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl-and-turns-heartbreak-into-great-art plot is as hoary as they come, but Mariscal's eye-popping artwork and the evocation of a bygone musical era (Charlie Parker at the Village Vanguard, Tito Puente at the Palladium) are delirious.
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Feb 6, 201260Think of Chico and Rita as a test, one that gauges whether your love of Cuban jazz can exceed your threshold for lousy animation -- a real "good tunes/bad toons" quandary.
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60The blistering tunes and unique animation compensate for the rather unconvincing central love story that works best as a Forrest Gump-ian device to highlight some legendary real-life musicians.
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50The very best animation can excite the senses and inflame the imagination. But Chico & Rito's charmless line drawings just made me wish the film was live-action instead.
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50A shallow romanticization of Batista-era Cuba -- when the nation was a tropical paradise for the delectation of American jetsetters -- and what the revolution left in its wake.