Rango (2011)

 

Gore Verbinski is a director that likes his stuff to be surreal from time to time. So when he was attached to making this project with a pretty star-studded cast, interest was picqued. It's a bit of an oddball film, that doesn't truly deliver what one would expect and it has a few minor issues, but it can be enjoyed without much of a fuss.

Johnny Depp is Rango, a chameleon who pretends to be an actor while in the comfort of his cage. But when his owners have to swerve the car rather violently, Rango is tossed out and ends up in the middle of the Mojave desert by the side of the road. He learns from a (possibly) undead armadillo that there is a town nearby and gets some vague wordings about the Spirit of the West.

When Rango reaches the town, he pretends to be a badass gunslinger and strangely enough: most people buy it. 

Because he can act, or so he thinks.

Naturally, there are strange things afoot because there is a massive water shortage and Rango tries his inept best to get to the bottom of this, but the plot runs thicker than one might think.

Okay, that is a lie. You pretty instantly figure out who the bad guy is in the story. 

The film starts off in a pretty interesting way: you get a lot of weird swerves and there's some cool surreal imagery here. Couple that with some legitimately funny lines and you'd think we'd be off to the races. However, once Rango gets to the town, the surrealism pretty much flies out the window and what we get is a fairly standard 'liar revealed'-story in a Western setting. It's not bad, it just doesn't live up to the bizarro scenery that Verbinski created at first. You get some glimpses of it later on, especially with the Spirit of the West, who of course is Clint Eastwood (albeit voiced by Timothy Olyphant doing his best Eastwood impression and it is an impressive impression at that). 

So the film hinges on two ideas and they don't really mix all that well. In the end, you get an enjoyable animation feature (and Bill Nighy doing an excellent evil gunslinger voice as Rattlesnake Jake) but the story isn't anything special and somehow this could have been more interesting had Verbinski leaned in more to the surreal and absurdist side. 

Nevertheless: the kids are going to love it.