Rango
Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin
Runtime: 107 mins
Rating: ****
This film is showing in York at Reel cinema. Click here for more information.
There’s a wild moment early on in Rango – a bit of slapstick where the titular lizard played by Johnny Depp ricochets off a series of cars. At one point, a bright yellow smiley face gets stuck to his face, before he’s flung once more onto another car: a bright red Firebird, with Hunter S. Thompson as played by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas sat inside. It lasts for a split-second, but is the turning point where you fully realise that this Nickelodeon-financed animated movie about a cartoon lizard really isn’t geared towards kids.
And that’s fantastic. Somewhere down the line, children’s entertainment got stupid. Most university students can probably pinpoint a rough time where it started (for me it was the first time I was subjected to the carnival of destruction called The Amanda Show), but there’ll come a time where our memories of slightly mysterious children’s media will evaporate and we’ll be left with abominations like Fred: The Movie and anything on The Disney Channel. For now, though, Rango puts up a pretty good fight.
We’re not just talking about oblique references, however (although Apocalypse Now and every movie Clint Eastwood has ever been in both get nods); both the dialogue and the uncompromising nature of the story are brilliantly crafted. This is a film that takes its time, and meanders around without being desperate to get its point across. There are some crucial scenes that provide some very tangible catharsis, but for the most part it plays up to the slightly surreal visual palette with an equally surreal series of events.
And what visuals they are. It might be hackneyed and boring to say that “this is the best CGI we’ve seen yet”, because that’s to be expected, but it’s not just that. Rango is stunning in a way that Toy Story 3 just wasn’t. It’s immensely detailed, and the largely anthropomorphic characters feel human – more so than the walking dead in The Polar Express, at least. A scene with Rango freely walking across the highway that once served as the setting of the hyperactive opening sequence is so brilliantly executed that you just feel drawn closer to the screen. And of course, it’s worth noting that none of this was shot in 3D: a brilliant decision, it seems.
Some won’t like it. It’s weird, and people have different reactions to weird depending on what they’re like. Some kids will go away profoundly affected by it and only realise years later where it was coming from; others will be plagued by nightmares. Some will love Johnny Depp’s thesp-turned-sheriff of a lizard; others will despise him. Granted, this film isn’t for everyone, but for the people it suits, it’s about as good as it gets.
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