Rango is one of my favorite films of the year, and one of the most visually stunning animated films that I have ever seen--and I have seen a lot of them. It is not a kids movie, it is a family movie that is whip-smart when it wants to be, with plenty of homages, and some very deep ideas. Although it is dragged down sometimes with cheap gimmicks geared towards gaining a few chuckles from everyone in the audience, when it is not hampered with trying to be commercial friendly it is clever, funny, and at times even poignant.
After falling out of a moving car in the middle of the desert, a family's pet chameleon finds himself lost in more ways than one. A cryptic armadillo gives him the tools to fight for his survival: "To find water, you must first find Dirt," and with a little luck he comes to a dying town with una problema con agua. This little chameleon is a master actor who, with his ample amounts of spare time, creates plays with half a Barbie, a wind-up goldfish, a plastic tree, and a dead beetle. When he walks into the saloon of the town stuck in the Old West, he protects his fragile self by creating the character "Rango," the roughest, toughest cowboy in the desert. Although most unlike himself (he has an alias, a pen name, an avatar, a maiden name, but we never learn his actual one. Does he even have one? Has it ever occurred to him?), Rango is sure of himself, and with his lightning fast improv skills earns the respect and admiration of the town.
After proving himself in a very lucky battle with an unfortunate hawk, he meets the mayor of the town, a very old turtle with odd friends and deep connections. There he made sheriff of the town, and informed of just how bad the water shortage is. According to the banker there is only five days of water left for the entire town of Dirt, and it is up to Rango, and the hope that his lie has given to the townfolk, to save their poor community from certain destruction. Basically it becomes the animated version of Chinatown with a lizard whose imagination is too large and too fast for him to keep up with.
He makes friends and enemies voiced by an all-star cast. Johnny Depp voices Rango, and there is also work from Alfred Molina, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Isla Fisher, Stephen Root, Timothy Olyphant, and Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jake, the coolest and scariest villain since Col. Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds. There are fights with bank robbers, gunslingers, and just about every cliche that falls into the Spaghetti Western genre. It rocks!
Gore Verbinski directs with flair and vision. Watching this film it is easily recognizable that it was the work of the same person who directed the Pirates of the Caribbean films. The action sequences, the voice work, and the more imaginative scenes had the same sort of quality as his earlier films which I really enjoy watching. The CGI is stunning; the colors practically jump off of the screen and, unlike some of the more geometric work that trademarks Pixar films, this one focused much more on the realistic features of desert creatures. Rango's eyes looked like chameleon eyes, and that is something that really impressed me. As I said, this film is full of wink-nudges to great films like Chinatown, Star Wars, and there is an amazing dreamlike sequence involving a golf cart filled with Oscars driven by The Man With No Name, which is especially fitting for a film about a character who has no idea who he is or what he wants.
Rango lies and pretends, but in the end he is lonely guy without a purpose. We forgive his transgressions, though, because he first wanted to protect himself, but later discovered that "Rango" was more for the townsfolk than for himself. He looked with pity at a town literally fighting for its survival, a town that worshiped the water spigot, a town that readily believed his lies because they had no other hope, and he chose to fight to end their bondage to blue gold. We forgive him because we want his lies to work. This is a film about tall tales, legends, speculations, hallucinations and dreams, both filled and unfulfilled. It is spiritual without being overtly so, funny because it is written by funny people, and wonderful to watch because it looks like a labor of love.
4/4
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