New Review: Rango

Hazing Saddles

The state of animation is in an exciting place right now. It’s expanding far beyond the strictly family friendly fare that it was restricted to for so many years. Not to say that sticking with more wholesome themes and issues is necessarily a bad thing, since as much as Pixar shows its matured soul, there still remains an innocence that keeps the whole family interested. Many other studios have been trying endlessly to rival Pixar’s hold on quality animation, and while I give high marks for Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon, Dreamworks hasn’t had the best track record. For this particular film, this is the first movie to be produced by George Lucas’s visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic. While there are a few chinks in the armor of the film’s story and quirkiness, this is without a doubt a very strong and impressive start to some competition to the Pixar behemoth.

Johnny Depp has the title role (which is actually a pseudonym acquired later in the film) as a quirky little lizard who gets stranded in the desert after getting separated from his owners during a car incident. He winds up in the town of Dirt, an out of the way place that’s populated by critics that dress and behave like out of a Spaghetti western. The main problem the town is facing is a lack in the water supply causing the residents to flee and panic. When Rango accidentally kills the feared hawk, he is propelled as a hero and made sheriff, but soon the mystery starts to unravel and bigger tests are at Rango’s door.

The visually exciting palette of the film is brought about by the exquisite attention to design and detail in the world. While I normally don’t care for heavily detailed animal animation, like the kind on display in Happy Feet, it somehow works here because the tone is far more serious. Even though this is being marketed as a children’s movie, the target audience here is certainly an older audience who will understand and appreciate the film’s off-beat sense of humor and collection of cinematic references ranging from Sergio Leone to Apocalypse Now to Chinatown. Gore Verbinski has tackled the live action world with much success (he helmed the Pirates trilogy) and he infuses the a manic and crazy energy that cannot help but be enjoyed to the fullest extent.

The script by John Logan is an interesting sort of beast. For all the film’s ambition in style, the story is actually pretty pedestrian. The tale of the stranger that wins the heart of the locals by accident, then has to face his lies only to test himself by the climax is a little worn at this point, and despite many attempts to feel fresh with its quirky humor, it never quite breaks free from predictable chains. That in turns leads the film to believe it’s a little smarter and cleverer than it actually is. Fortunately, those cringey moments don’t last too long, and before long they are replaced by an inventive homage to a cinematic idea and that pushes it back to such an enjoyable level.

At this point, if Johnny Depp wasn’t playing a computer animated reptile with a fondness for Hawaiian shirts, thespian acting and Hunter S. Thompson tendencies, then we would consider that a problem. Depp always has an interesting take on any character he plays, and while Rango has some difficulty shedding his annoying mannerisms, Depp makes it work in the end. The supporting cast is pretty impressive as well, which includes Isla Fisher as a gung-ho potential love interest, Ned Beatty as the seedy mayor of Dirt, Abigail Breslin as the wise-cracking young possum girl, and Bill Nighy as the notorious gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake. What elevates them is that this cast actually interacted with eachother on a set in order to get a better performance instead of recording voice sessions by themselves. The animators take that as a reference point for the characters (more Where the Wild Things Are, less like Zemeckis). The results are positive, and I’d hope this process gets used more often.

The film does have some issues in its pedestrian storytelling and it’s not quite as clever and hip as it thinks it is, but in the end, I just had an enormously fun time with it. It’s a movie for movie lovers, and the fact that an animated film can be for a maturer crowd without going a Heavy Metal route is a nice thing to see. The voice acting is great, the style and look is fantastic, and the countless callbacks to older films delights me to no end, particularly when a very special “cameo” appears in the last act. This won’t top anything from Pixar, but right now it’s a great example of the evolving world of animation, and I’m eager to see where it goes in the future.

A-