Complain all you want about the Oscars (I certainly do), but give the academy major props for bypassing a clunker like “Cars 2” and handing a Best Animated Feature Film nomination to something as wonderful as “Chico & Rita.”
Fernando Trueba, who won the Foreign Language Feature Oscar for the live-action “Belle Epoque” (1992) joined with Spanish graphic artist Javier Mariscal to co-direct this swooningly beautiful, adults-only drama.
It’s a star-crossed romance between jazz pianist Chico (voiced by Eman Xor Ona) and the sultry Rita (Limara Meneses), surely the most voluptuous animated female character since Jessica Rabbit.
I don’t recall Jessica ever having a full-frontal nude scene, much less having onscreen sex like Rita does with Chico in 1948 Havana.
And you certainly won’t find a drug subplot in 1959 New York straight out of “Sweet Smell of Success” in anything from Pixar.
Bookended with scenes in present-day Cuba, this is a swooningly romantic, decades-spanning saga that also takes the frequently separated lovers to Las Vegas, Hollywood, London, Paris and several other cities — all ravishingly depicted in period detail.
If that’s a feast for the eyes, and the soundtrack delights the ears with great music by Bebo Valdes, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Tito Puente.
There are cartoon cameos by Woody Herman, Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Nat King Cole and many more.
But “Chico 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.”