Rango
02/12/11 | Movies, Reviews | 0 Comments
Wide Release: March 4, 2011
Rango is a slightly neurotic chameleon who gets lost from his owner on a trip through the desert. He’s been alone for a long time and doesn’t really know how to act around other “people,” though his penchant for theatricality gets him into dangerous territory when he runs afoul of some nefarious gangster-types in the animal run town of Dirt. There’s a shortage of water and most of the town’s inhabitants had to sell their land in order to survive. But when Rango comes in and claims to be a vigilante who killed seven bandit brothers (with one bullet, no less), he unexpectedly finds himself appointed sheriff and has to play the part in order to protect the town’s inhabitants.
Johnny Depp voices Rango with the deftness of the great character actor he is. He’s able to switch back and forth between eccentric and tragic, fearless and lonely. Though his is the only developed character in the movie. Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers, Confessions of a Shopaholic) plays Bean, another reptile trying to keep her late father’s farm afloat. She’s fierce, and has a weird habit of freezing during stressful situations (literally, she just freezes in place and can’t move, some sort of defense mechanism?). You also have a corrupt government official and a wicked rattlesnake whose bloodlust is only outweighed by his two-dimensionality.
I guess the story was cute (especially for the youngins), and the graphics were great for a special effects studio who’s never done a full-length animated feature before (ILM, who did CGI work for Iron Man, Harry Potter, Transformers, Terminator, the list goes on). But the whole thing felt stilted to me after a while. I was mildly curious about the ending, but got bored midway through. And about three-quarters through the movie, Rango has an existential hallucination akin to the desert/stone crab scene in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about), and couldn’t help but wonder if director Gore Verbinski has run out of ideas… Maybe that’s a little harsh, but nothing in this movie felt original.
It’s a decent movie to see if you’ve got some kiddies to take (to be fair, the kids in the audience laughed a lot and seemed to enjoy it), but save it for your To Be Rented pile otherwise.
6/10
Until next…
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