Linda Gunderson

Linda Gunderson is one of the two tetartagonists (the other one being Tulio) of Rio. She is the owner and best friend of Blu from Moose Lake, Minnesota. She is the owner of Blu Macaw Books, her bookstore one floor above which her home is. She is voiced by Leslie Mann as an adult and Sofia Scarpa Saldanha (the daughter of director Carlos Saldanha) as a child.

Linda is first seen as a little girl outside in the snow, opening a crate to find a baby blue macaw in there. She takes him in and takes care of him, naming him "Blu". As they both grow up together, she throws him birthday parties, takes him to spelling bees (and won one at the age of 14) and even to her high school promenade. And finally, she is then working in a bookstore. During the routine, Linda is woken up by an alarm (which Blu is imitating), brushes her teeth, gargles, eats her breakfast, gets Blu to take his vitamins, and then goes downstairs to work. Then Blu logs her on and opens the shop. While she is selling books, she gives a plate of cookies and hot chocolate to Blu (just how he likes it: with miniature marshmallows)* while talking to her mother on the phone about whether she should visit her or stay and take care of Blu. She is then visited by Tulio Monteiro, Doctor of Ornithology, an aviary intern, who has been looking for Blu. At first, she is against his idea: to bring Blu to Rio de Janeiro (this is in order to meet with the last female blue macaw and save their species), but thinks about it after he tells him there could be no more chances, and not doing this could end their species. She reluctantly takes Blu to Rio, assuring him that she has never broken a promise to him, and that she is also scared to do it, but wouldn't make him do it if it weren't right.

She isn't very familiar with what it is like in Rio (so far except for the fact that you have to have suntan lotion on, and she applies it to Blu's beak). She watches performers for the world's biggest party called Carnival cross the street, and enters the aviary. There, when Blu is put in, Linda watches through the monitors. When Blu and Jewel (who he meets) fights when he assumes they were going to kiss, but she wants to escape, Tulio turns on Lionel Richie's song "Say You, Say Me" (which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1986), Jewel fights with Blu physically, causing both Linda and Tulio to assume the song got them to mate quickly. She is reluctant to leave Blu by himself (though he is with Jewel), but Tulio tells her that he has Jewel, and that Sylvio, the best guard in the business, will keep an eye on them all night.

While Linda and Tulio are eating out together, the latter gets a phone call from Sylvio who tells him that Blu and Jewel have been abducted (because Nigel had attacked the guard in order to let the orphan boy Fernando in to capture them). Linda then blames Tulio for this, and they look for him, using missing posters.

The next morning, as Linda and Tulio are sleeping, Fernando, serving as a double agent (working for the poachers for money, but having concern for the birds, too), takes Linda and Tulio to where they "are" (unaware that they had escaped). Though Tulio tells Linda they cannot trust Fernando because they don't know him, she tells him she has no choice. On the way, as the streets are closing, and they are in an area of favelas (Brazilian shanty towns or slums), they cannot get Tulio's jeep through, so Fernando trades in the jeep for a motorcycle, which he drives recklessly.

Once they get to the poachers' hideout, much to Fernando's disappointment, Blu and Jewel are gone, and Linda is shocked to find out she trusted the one who took the birds away. When Tulio reveals that he can't drive a motorcycle, Linda takes over and as she is able to drive it, she takes it as "just like riding a snow mobile".

That night, during Carnival, Tulio and Linda sneak in and disguise as performers in blue macaw costumes (presumably resembling Blu and Jewel, respectively), and Linda is pushed inside a float, and begs to be let out, only to find out that the "floor" elevates up. She says her catchphrase "Cheese and sprinkles" (That is where Blu got it). She misunderstands her "fellow" performers (actual performers) and the director when they tell her "Bola". She is shocked when she finds out from Tulio that it means she has to shake her "tushy". She later sees Blu riding on a bulldog named Luiz (as he is setting off to rescue Jewel from the smugglers' float). Then, Linda steals the float when she finds out that the smugglers and the cockatoo named Nigel have taken Blu (subsequently) (as Fernando was leaving rags behind as a trail to lead them), but they miss when the smugglers take off in their plane.

However, later, when Fernando points something out, Linda sees that Blu is finally flying (in order to have saved an injured Jewel from falling to her death). As soon as Jewel's wing is healed by Tulio, he, Linda and Fernando organize a sanctuary to protect the jungle from smugglers and she then bids Blu a final good-bye.

In the credits, she and Tulio share a hang glider and fly with it with Blu, Jewel, their chicks, and their friends Nico and Pedro following, and neither are aware that Luiz is hang gliding, too. In snapshots, it reveals that the sanctuary workers have become a family and that they opened a Brazilian branch of Linda's bookstore "Blu Macaw Books".


 * The hot chocolate part is a factual error; chocolate is toxic for macaws.