2010 film
Chico and Rita
|
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d2/Chico_Rita.jpg/220px-Chico_Rita.jpg) Theatrical release poster
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Directed by
| Fernando Trueba
Javier Mariscal
Tono Errando
|
---|
Written by
| Fernando Trueba
Ignacio Martinez de Pison
|
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Produced by
| Santi Errando
Cristina Huete
Michael Rose
Martin Pope
|
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Starring
| Limara Meneses
Eman Xor Ona
Mario Guerra
Jon Adams
Renny Arozarena
|
---|
Edited by
| Arnau Quiles
|
---|
Music by
| Bebo Valdes
|
---|
Production
companies
| |
---|
Distributed by
| Buena Vista International
(Spain)
CinemaNX (United Kingdom)
Rezo Films (France)
|
---|
Release dates
|
- 19 November 2010
(
2010-11-19
)
(United Kingdom)
- 25 February 2011
(
2011-02-25
)
(Spain)
|
---|
Running time
| 94 minutes
|
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Countries
| Spain
[1]
[2]
United Kingdom
Canada
France
Isle of Man
[1]
[2]
[3]
Hungary
[1]
[2]
Philippines
[1]
[2]
|
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Languages
| Spanish
English
French
|
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Budget
| €10 million
[4]
|
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Box office
| $2.2 million
[5]
|
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Chico and Rita
(
Spanish
:
Chico y Rita
) is a 2010
adult animated
romantic
drama
film directed by Tono Errando,
Fernando Trueba
and
Javier Mariscal
.
[
citation needed
]
The story of Chico and Rita is set against backdrops of
Havana
, New York City,
Las Vegas
,
Los Angeles
and Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and romantic desire unite them, but their journey?in the tradition of the Latin ballad, the
bolero
?brings heartache and torment. The film was produced by Fernando Trueba Producciones, Estudio Mariscal, and
Magic Light Pictures
. It received financing from CinemaNX and
Isle of Man Film
.
[1]
[2]
It won the
Goya Award for Best Animated Film
at the
25th Goya Awards
and was nominated for
Best Animated Feature
at the
84th Academy Awards
(the first nomination for a Spanish full-length animated film).
Plot
[
edit
]
In 1948
Havana
, Chico and his best friend Ramon are struggling
dandies
in a low-life bar during the Batista regime. During what's meant to be a date with American tourists, they both go to a bar where Chico falls in love with the band's lead singer, Rita. Chico and Ramon then go to the
Tropicana Club
, which happens to have a missing pianist for a performance Rita will be involved in. Chico takes the offer and has a successful performance with the band. Both Rita and Chico then go on their own date which involves a dangerous motorcycle and Chico playing
bebop
music to Rita at another empty bar, and having sex at Chico's place. The next day, Juana, Chico's former girlfriend, walks in and picks a fight with Rita. The two women angrily leave Chico, feeling betrayed. However, Chico is still smitten with Rita and begs Ramon to convince her to perform with him for an upcoming radio contest. Ramon pays Rita to sing with Chico but after the contest, Rita leaves Chico without speaking to him. He follows her to the house of a
santera
, who predicts that Chico will cause her much suffering. The two win the contest and awarded a month's engagement at the Hotel Nacional.
A few weeks later, Chico and Rita are having great success in their performances. One businessperson, Ron, notices Rita and offers to take Rita to New York City, a burgeoning place for jazz and Latin music. However, Rita insists that the offer must include Chico. However, Chico gets a false impression Rita is leaving him for Ron, and has a date with Juana. Hurt, Rita agrees to go to New York with Ron, alone. Chico and Ramon also go to New York to seek their fortunes. Chico finds work as a party musician, and Ramon as an
usher
at the
Plaza Hotel
. At one of his party gigs, Chico runs into a successful Rita again, and the two run away in her new car and spend the night together again. The next day, Ron locates Ramon and proposes a deal to finance his artist-agency business, as long as Ramon finds jobs to keep Chico away from Rita. Ramon complies with his end of the bargain and signs Chico with
Dizzy Gillespie
, who gives him a gig in Paris and a European tour. Rita becomes a big film star while Chico finds a new girlfriend in Paris. Back in New York, despite her wealth and success, Rita is mistreated socially due to her
skin color
.
While being driven to a set, the radio plays a new Jazz hit that she instantly recognizes as "Rita", the piece Chico composed for her while they dated in Cuba. Rita then notices Chico playing the song at a bar under a different name, "Lily", which is the name of Chico's French girlfriend's dog. After the performance, the two passionately kiss and make up. Chico and Rita agree to marry that New Year's Eve, after Rita's debut in Las Vegas. However, it never happens. Ramon, by slipping drugs into Chico's coat, gets him arrested and sent back to Cuba at the start of
Castro's
regime; and Rita ruins her career by publicly denouncing
racism
of the film industry and the hypocrisy of being a celebrated black artist. Forty-seven years later, Chico is a
shoe-shiner
in Havana, Ramon is dead, and Ron is in a
nursing home
in New York. Chico gets asked for his jazz compositions by a famous young singer and her entourage. After performing and recording his music with them, he becomes world-famous for the second time. Chico is then allowed re-entry into the United States, and reunites with Rita at the same Las Vegas motel she's been a housekeeper at for her 47 years in the city.
Cast
[
edit
]
- Limara Meneses as Rita
- Eman Xor Ona as Chico
- Mario Guerra as Ramon
- Jon Adams
- Renny Arozarena
- Blanca Rosa Blanco
- Jackie de la Nuez
- Rigoberto Ferrera
- Ken Forman
- Ray Gillon
- Steve Harper
- Lenny Mandel as Roy
- Jorge Ryan
- Claudia Valdes
- Ashley Albert
- Tracey Ayer
- Carlos Cabal
- Wendy Dillon
- Kathy Fitzgerald
- Luis Alberto Garcia
- Mark Anthony Henry
- Kerin McCue
- Miriam Socarras
- Peter Appel
- Jay Benedict
- Luis Enrique Carreres
- Aleida Enriquez
- Carlos Ever Fonseca
- Eddy Calderon
- Alexis Gonzalez
- David Kramer
- Estrella Morente
- Diana Preisler
- Isabelle Stoffel
- Gladys Zurbano
Collaborators
[
edit
]
Director
Fernando Trueba
met designer and artist
Javier Mariscal
ten years earlier when he asked him to create a poster for his
Latin jazz
documentary
Calle 54
.
[6]
So began a collaboration that saw
Mariscal
design all the artwork for Trueba's Calle 54 Records, make animated pop promos for the label, and together create a
jazz
-music restaurant in
Madrid
. Chico & Rita would be Javier Mariscal's first animated feature film as designer. The idea to make an animated feature film emerged from one of those pop promos, La Negra Tomasa by Cuban musician Compay Segundo. Mariscal's younger brother Tono Errando, with a background in music, film and animation, leads the audio-visual side of the multi-disciplinary creative company, and was chosen to collaborate with Trueba and Mariscal. From the beginning, all three men were excited by the idea of making a film set against the Havana music scene in the late-40s and 50s. "That age is beautiful in design and architecture, so visually it belongs very much to Mariscal's world," says Errando. "And in music it's a moment that's fantastic: it's the moment where Cuban musicians go to New York and join the Anglo Saxon jazz musicians. This fusion changed the music at that time."
Production
[
edit
]
Before drawing the locations in
Cuba
, Mariscal completed an intense research trip. Although many of Havana's pre-revolutionary buildings had decayed, either deliberately or from neglect, the filmmakers discovered that the Havana city government had assembled an archive of photographs to help with street repairs. Pictures of every street corner in Havana since 1949 were archived, conveying the look and mood of the era. The team also found pictures taken inside the planes ferrying Americans to the party island. Mariscal explained that the planes arriving from New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami during that period were filled with Cuban musicians entertaining the passengers. They provided much historical information about the Cubans of that era: the clothes, the faces, the streets, billboards, cars, bars, the way they lived, and the sensational life of Havana.
Release
[
edit
]
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
distributed the film in 100 Spanish theaters on 25 February 2010.
[4]
GKIDS
holds the distribution rights for the film in North America.
[7]
The film has also been shown at the following festivals and released in the UK and Spain. The English dub will include the voices of
Wendell Pierce
,
Mary J. Blige
,
Rob Riggle
,
Chris Pine
, and
Viola Davis
.
Film festivals
[
edit
]
Reception
[
edit
]
Chico & Rita
has an approval rating of 87% on
review aggregator
website
Rotten Tomatoes
, based on 71 reviews, and an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critical consensus states, "Aimed at adults and animated with zest,
Chico & Rita
is a romantic delight packed with cultural detail and flavor."
[17]
It also has a score of 76 out of 100 on
Metacritic
, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
[18]
Roger Ebert
of the
Chicago Sun-Times
gave the film three and a half stars out of four,
[19]
while the
BBC
's
Mark Kermode
listed the film fifth in his top five films of 2010.
[20]
Philip French
called the film "the year's best musical and one of the year's finest animated films" and an "utterly delightful, ...affecting, funny, historically accurate and at times pleasingly erotic story",
[21]
while Sounds and Colors called the film "a crowning achievement; a mixture of great animation, music and history with a narrative that reads like the simple story of heartbreak that bestows the greatest of love songs."
[22]
In March 2011,
The Miami Herald
said "the film melds dazzling visuals and a wildly infectious score into a simple yet affecting love story" and while the "first 30 minutes of
Chico & Rita
achieve a giddy high the rest of the movie can never match", "
Chico & Rita
makes you fall hard for music, as hard as the protagonists fall for each other, and the movie is decent enough to give its lovebirds the tender finale they deserve."
[15]
Fotogramas
, the oldest and most prestigious film magazine in Spain, gave the film 4 out of 5 stars and praised how its characters were "more human and alive than many real actors",
[23]
unlike
Variety,
which negatively reviewed the film, calling it, "...a test, one that gauges whether your love of
Cuban jazz
can exceed your threshold for lousy animation... [in] an unflattering style, like a children's
coloring book
with its rudimentary line drawings and stiff, expressionless characters." The film was "...evocative enough of late-'40s Havana and the sweaty, sensual music of the time."
[8]
Accolades
[
edit
]
Music
[
edit
]
The film has an original soundtrack by Cuban pianist, bandleader and composer
Bebo Valdes
. It features music by
Thelonious Monk
,
Cole Porter
,
Dizzy Gillespie
and
Freddy Cole
. According to Tono Errando, "it was the moment when new musicians came along like
Charlie Parker
and
Dizzy Gillespie
with a new kind of music, that is not for dancing, full of notes, played really fast, a music that now we call
jazz
. Then the Cuban musicians arrived. Dizzy Gillespie has said many times in interviews, there was a moment for him that was very important, it was the moment he first played with
Chano Pozo
. Pozo was the first percussionist that played in a jazz band."
[29]
Cuban pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger of the film
Bebo Valdes
was living in obscurity in Stockholm, when Trueba reintroduced his playing to an international audience with his film
Calle 54
, and went on to produce the Grammy-winning
Lagrimas Negras
album, teaming Valdes with flamenco singer
Diego 'el Cigala
'. Trueba was also able to persuade the real-life flamenco star
Estrella Morente
, who has been performing since the age of seven, to participate in the film. Musicians featured in the film include
Chucho Valdes
,
Dizzy Gillespie
,
Charlie Parker
,
Chano Pozo
,
Tito Puente
,
Ben Webster
, and
Thelonious Monk
.
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
"Chico and Rita wins 2011 European Film Award, earns Best Animated Feature Nomination at Annies 2012"
.
Isle of Man Guide
. Retrieved
8 May
2015
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
"Animation Chico and Rita wins European film award"
.
BBC News
. 6 December 2011
. Retrieved
8 May
2015
.
- ^
"Chico and Rita (Animated Feature)"
.
Isle of Man Film
. Isle of Man Government. Archived from
the original
on 18 May 2015
. Retrieved
8 May
2015
.
- ^
a
b
De Pablos, Emiliano (1 December 2010).
"Disney takes 'Chico and Rita' for Spain"
.
Variety
. Retrieved
6 May
2011
.
- ^
"Chico & Rita (2012)"
.
Box Office Mojo
. Internet Movie Database
. Retrieved
21 March
2016
.
- ^
Dossier Calle 54 Club
. Issuu (17 February 2010). Retrieved on 2011-03-11.
- ^
Graser, Marc (25 January 2012).
"GKids makes splash with two in toon pool"
.
Variety
.
- ^
a
b
Debruge, Peter (10 September 2010).
"Chico and Rita"
. Variety
. Retrieved
6 May
2011
.
- ^
"2010 Films ? Chico & Rita"
.
Toronto International Film Festival
. 21 July 2010. Archived from
the original
on 1 December 2010
. Retrieved
11 March
2011
.
- ^
Chico y Rita
, London Spanish film festival, 2010, archived from
the original
on 4 September 2010
- ^
"The Best Annual Latin American Film Festival in London celebrates its 20th edition in November 2010"
,
The London Latin American Film Festival
, retrieved
11 March
2011
- ^
Winners
, The Holland Animation Film Festival, archived from
the original
on 8 December 2015
, retrieved
6 May
2011
- ^
"The Holland Animation Film Festival 2010: Chico and Rita steal the show"
,
Phaidon Press
(article), UK, 10 November 2010, archived from
the original
on 10 September 2012
- ^
Filmfest 2011
, Design Indaba
, retrieved
11 March
2011
- ^
a
b
"Falling in love in Havana ? and all that jazz"
.
The Miami Herald
. 4 March 2011
. Retrieved
6 May
2011
.
- ^
"Estudio Mariscal and Chico & Rita, an animated movie"
. Typo Berlin 2011 Shift. 19 May 2011. Archived from
the original
on 2 October 2011
. Retrieved
9 July
2011
.
- ^
"Chico & Rita"
,
Rotten Tomatoes
,
Fandango
, retrieved
6 October
2021
- ^
"Chico & Rita"
.
Metacritic
.
- ^
Chico and Rita movie review and film summary (2012) - Roger Ebert
, retrieved
8 August
2021
- ^
Kermode Uncut: My Top Five Films of the Year
on
YouTube
. Accessed 2011-4-10.
- ^
French, Philip (21 November 2010).
"Chico & Rita"
.
The Observer
(review). London
. Retrieved
6 May
2011
.
- ^
Chico and Rita
(review), Sounds & Colours, 19 November 2010
- ^
Chico y Rita
(review),
ES
: Fotogramas, 10 February 2011
- ^
"Oscars 2012: Nominees in full"
.
BBC News
. Retrieved
24 January
2012
.
- ^
Vary, Adam B. (5 December 2011).
"
'Kung Fu Panda 2,' 'Puss in Boots,' 'Rango' lead Annie award nominations"
.
Entertainment Weekly
.
Time
. Retrieved
5 December
2011
.
- ^
The 24th European film awards winners
, European film academy, 3 December 2011, archived from
the original
on 8 December 2011
, retrieved
5 December
2011
- ^
Europai Animacios Jatekfilm Fesztival
,
HU
: Kecskemeti Animacios Filmfesztival, 2011
- ^
"Ganadores"
,
Premios Goya
[
Goya awards
], Academia de cine
- ^
Trueba, Fernando PCSA (3 October 2010).
"Chico & Rita ? Pressbook"
(PDF)
. Estudio Mariscal, Magic Light Pictures, IOM. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 5 March 2012
. Retrieved
8 August
2011
.
External links
[
edit
]
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1980s
| |
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(1994)
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(1997)
- ¡Que vecinos tan animales!
(1998)
- Goomer
(1999)
|
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2000s
| |
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2010s
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2020s
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