Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
4/2/11
As much as we all like to
hate on studio executives for dumbing down and generally screwing up movies,
the truth is that if we went to see more smart movies, we'd get more of
them. And when there's a genre or style that can be relied upon to
make money no matter what, the money men mostly leave the creative types
alone. Case in point: animated movies make money hand-over-fist
pretty much regardless of their content, so you'll actually see things
like Up and Fantastic
Mr. Fox in the format that you'd never witness in live action.
Add to the list Gore Verbinski's Rango, the first feature animated
by George Lucas' iconic special effects house Industrial Light & Magic.
On the surface, John Logan's screenplay (from a story he drempt up with
Verbinski and James Ward Byrkit) is a simple genre exercise, a Western
filled with animated animals instead of people. But it's also so
much more: a resonant story about the friction between traditional
ethics and the march of progress, the relationship between animals and
the human world that surrounds them, and most surprisingly, an existentialist
meditation on the role of archetypes in defining ourselves and our place
in the world. It takes a little while to get your bearings in a movie
that deliberately declines to explain itself as it goes, but by the end,
Rango is truly something to behold.
A chameleon (voice of Johnny
Depp) stages elaborate plays with the inanimate objects that surround him
having gone a little bit mad in the aquarium in which he's kept by his
human owners. An accident sends that aquarium flying out of their
speeding car and the critter finds himself alone in the desert, advised
by a bit of Roadkill (Alfred Molina) to seek out a town a day's walk away.
It's Dirt, a collection of human trash turned into an Old West town by
the assorted desert creatures that call it home. These are tough
times: water is scarce and the weekly arrival of water through a
nearby pipe has stopped. The chameleon seizes the chance to be whoever
he wants to be, christens himself Rango and delights the townsfolk with
larger-than-life tales of heroism that result in him being made Sheriff
by the Mayor (Ned Beatty), who's “helping” the locals by buying up their
land. When the bank is robbed of all the town's remaining water,
Rango leads a posse to track it down. But there are bigger and darker
forces at work than just a few criminals, and before Rango can save his
friends, he'll have to learn what real heroism means from The Spirit of
the West (Timothy Olyphant).
ILM has certainly made their
animation debut distinctive: the creatures and locations that make
up Rango's world strike an impressive middle ground between animated
whimsy and the photo realism to which the best special effects aspire.
As a result, these critters are designed to delight an adult audience far
more than the kids most cartoons are targeted at: they're dirty and
scruffy in the style of real wild animals and smaller kids would probably
find critters like Bad Bill and Rattlesnake Jack a little scary.
But for those amused by the scraggly creations, this is a fascinating world
that begs for as much of the viewer's attention as possible. No mention
is ever made of the town being assembled from human trash, but the “buildings”
are mostly discarded items like mail boxes, jugs and Pepto Bismol bottles.
The heroes ride road runners like horses and a villainous gang of moles
fly into battle on bats.
Logan's story is epitomized
by its opening, when we see the future Rango philosophizing about who he
is in the world, pull back to watch him stage a surreal stage play with
junk like a wind-up fish and the torso of a Barbie doll he considers his
“friends”, then pull back again to see that they're all in a fish tank
in a human car. Rango never explains its world, and the more
attention we pay and thought you put into the relationship between animals
and the human world their actions mimic, the more rewarded you'll be, particularly
by the third act when the movie finally puts all its cards on the table.
The way we define ourselves by the archetypical example of others looms
large over the proceedings, as the people of Dirt are torn between the
vision of the world exemplified by the Old West Gunslinger like Rango and
that of the Modern Businessman like the Mayor. Our hero's visit to
the Spirit of the West is a wonderful scene, although Olyphant does such
a terrific Clint Eastwood impression that it's a bit of a disappointment
to see in the credits that it wasn't The Man With No Name himself making
an appearance.
Vocal performances are strong
across the board, starting, of course, with Depp. The role allows
him to indulge most every side of his iconic talent, combining mimicry,
comic timing, pathos and an overall taste for the surreal. Beatty,
who's career has been revived by big parts in recent animated movies, is
terrific as the Mayor, affecting a low, soulless growl I never would have
suspected was him. Isla Fisher is solid as Beans, the feisty girl
whose farm is imperiled by the drought, and Abigail Breslin affects a nicely
sweet/cynical voice as little townsmole Priscilla. Veteran heavies
like Bill Nighy, Ray Winstone and Harry Dean Stanton populate the screen
with many memorable villains. Because the cast doesn't contain a
single performer known primarily as a comedian, it's a more dramatic set
of characters than usual in this kind of exercise, appropriate to the goofy
but intense story they're telling.
And don't let my high-minded
musings put you off Rango: it's quite funny and exciting at
the same time as it's thinking those big thoughts. Verbinki, an old
hand at both from directing Depp in the first three Pirates of the Caribbean
movies, is the latest live action director to make an auspicious debut
in animation, and as the number of noteworthy films made in the format
continues to grow, major filmmakers will no doubt continue to dabble in
it. As long as you keep buying tickets, that is. Funny how
that works. |
