Rango Review -- Dull, Dry, Totally Worth It

Futurism and the surreal meet in fevered dreams, in Rango.

ILM Studios and Gore Verbinski team up to do a Western-themed animated movie where Johnny Depp plays a chameleon with Hollywood dreams. On paper, this shouldn’t work. At times, it doesn’t. The theater I was in had five parents leave with an average of 10 children. At this point, the initial thirst of seeing a happy-go-lucky animated film for the year has waned. Minimal word of mouth is circulating about Rango because it embodies the truest tropes of traditional Westerns. The plot rambles and there are moments of quiet dignity, the movie drags -- almost in a delightful manner. When the film is at its lowest, the attention to detail and experimental animation keeps the viewer invested. Rango, much like its leading lizard, doesn’t possess the ability to be the best at anything, but the attempts made in this movie make it worth watching.

It’s almost as if Verbinski and friends didn’t care that they were playing around with a 135 million dollar budget. I mean they “didn’t care” as both a pro and con. This chameleon that would eventually grow into the role of Rango, depended greatly on how interesting the director and animators could work together in making him interesting to the audience. The problem is, Rango is asymmetrically ugly and his supporting cast have browned and rotted teeth. The story literally takes place in Dirt. A town wrought with drought and infrequent hawk attacks. If this story is meant for families and kids, then mom and dad will have a lot to talk about on the ride home.

Rango and his posse aren't quite the traditional, cuddly, cast we're use to seeing in an animated film of this quality. Bad teeth and undulating lizard eyes take a special kind of person to gravitate to.
If you are a mom or dad reading this then be prepared for the eventual, “What happens when we die?” or “Can I shoot a snake in the face?” Questions that I asked several people prior to the credits rolling. I wonder why they looked at me all weird?

I’m not a big fan of celebrity voice casting. I think there are so many capable voice actors who often have their jobs snatched away  by ‘passable’ celebrities that were hired just to put butts in the seats, or to get Blu-Rays off the shelves. Johnny Depp as Rango is great. I honestly have nothing bad to say about his performance. There is no Jack Sparrow-isms and he genuinely blends into the rest of the cast -- to the point where you forget that it’s Johnny Depp. Isla Fisher and Bill Nighy are real standouts considering I had to look at the credits to see if they were in the movie. They made something out of a fairly boring script.

Picturesque vistas are striking, but seeing soot and dirt blow and bounce to a wind pattern are one of the smalle elements I appreciate most about Rango.
Where Rango hooks the viewer, are these fine moments of detail. There is a scene where the quirky lizard is hurled to the ground, where his tank shatters and his adventure would soon begin. The glass that breaks, followed by the dirt that sifts over the road, I’ve never seen that before. I’ve never seen such a close representation of a Salvador Dali hallucination, but ILM Studios does this twice in the film during Rango’s daydreams.

The biggest drawback of Rango would be how the moments between the tension and character development are edited. In true Western fashion, Rango emulates a casual relativity to the audience, by depicting the city of Dirt inhabited with simple principals -- and simple people [err...rodents]. Sadly, this doesn’t make for a Sergio Corbucci-type masterpiece. The moments between the rising action play more like a slapstick tale found in the sequels to Django. It wasn’t for me, but it I appreciate a movie trying to blend the finer touches of an entire genre -- while catering to future Western-lovers.

The whole time watching I’m thinking, “this is what we should be doing with animation.” Making an animated movie with hokey music filled with gibberish-words has been Disney’s forte. Sculpting stories that effect both young and old viewers in the animated medium has been dominated by Pixar and Dreamworks. I would be very interested to see if ILM and Verbinski made another attempt in this medium, but with a better script and direction. Because as much as I really enjoyed Rango’s homage to the traditional Western, I wished they wouldn’t have kept the parts of Westerns I hated as child.

I give Rango...

He now sells cheap car insurance.


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