I think Johnny Depp's aging okay, for such an old man
dir: Gore Verbinski
I guess it was inevitable, but it still comes as something of a surprise. Considering the extra cost slapped on tickets for 3D flicks at the cinema, one day a studio was going to decide that it was a safe bet to make a CGI animated flick for adults.
I don’t mean like a 3D porno CGI animated flick for the cinemas, which would probably be as eye-gouging as it sounds. I mean a flick that has all the cutting edge visual effects stuff, but a screenplay no kid on this planet could give a fuck about.
Rango is as much Western homage as it is a testament to the power of Johnny Depp. To a lesser extent, it’s also a testament to Gore Verbinski’s sway, being able to convince a studio to sink a shitload of money into something kids would find duller than vegetables and algebra.
If I walked into a studio and said “Hey, give me a hundred million dollars, and I’ll make an animated movie which quotes and references Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cat Ballou and Chinatown, and I’ll even quote that other kid favourite flick, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I guarantee you not a single kid in the whole world will like the flick, and there’s practically no merchandising opportunities as well”, they would have thrown my corpse out of a window from a great height. But Verbinski and Depp say it to a studio, a studio aware of the fact that the Pirates of the Caribbean flicks made billions of dollars, and they apparently said “Yes, absolutely we’ll give you absolutely everything we can, and please, fuck our sisters as well.”
Sure, anthropomorphic animals are like crack cocaine to the kiddies, but there’s not a line of dialogue that would have been comprehensible or comprehendible to the erstwhile kiddies that nagged their parents into taking them along to the cinema for this strange, strange flick. I say it’s strange not because the plot or the story are that out there, but because, adhering as it does to a familiar path, it’s still replete with odd interludes and strange surrealist touches.
Rango himself is a motor-mouthed chameleon mouthed or voiced by Johnny Depp. He speaks quickly enough and flails spastically enough such that even the more attentive and pop cultural literate kids in the audience would be whiningly inquiring of their parents as to why the on screen lizard is speaking Russian and tweaking on meth.
Accidentally launched out of the back of a car, the domestic pet is deposited in the wasteland of the Mojave Desert, where he begins his quest for water. Not for enlightenment, even though it’s proffered to him, and not for adventure, though it’s forthcoming. He just wants water.
So does everyone else, though. The moment he arrives in the town of Dirt, everything centres around the absence of and getting of water. It’s the only currency, and the only thing of worth, mostly because of its scarcity. Yes, a potent lesson in economics and natural monopolies is in the offing.
Why there’s a ye olde style town populated by animals who think they’re performers at a gold rush era re-enactment is never explained, nor does it need to be. These creatures are anthropomorphic, sure, and talk in frontier times tones and clichés, but it’s pretty strongly implied that events are occurring are contemporary, and in our world. Our world, where toys come alive when we’re not looking, and where fish fathers cross the world in search of their children, so I guess it’s not that absurd.
Well, that element at least. It’s not about believability, it’s about acceptability. When chameleon arrives at Dirt, after walking into a saloon, he ends up inventing who he is on the spot as a tough hombre, with the name Rango. His identity keeps coming up as an issue, a fundamental issue, over the course of the story, but it’s not like he really existed previous to developing this persona anyway. So when he’s outed as not the bad motherfucker he claimed to be, it’s meant to be disillusioning for the decent citizens of Dirt.
Yes, lying is bad, apparently, but these are talking animals, so I’m not sure it matters that much. More at issue is the length of time it takes Rango to solve the mystery of the missing water, which previously used to arrive every Wednesday at 12pm. Now those days are gone. When the Mayor of Dirt, a turtle (voiced by Ned Beatty), wearing John Huston’s hat from Chinatown, starts talking about the person who controls the water controlling everything, you already know how the story is going to play out.
And it does, with a stack of action sequences, last minute rescues and reversals, in entirely predictable ways. The thing is, though, the script is so fucking strange in parts, and so surreal, that it defies its conventional trappings enough to be interesting for a greater length of time than it has any right to.
A case in point is the very strange interlude where cactuses start walking, and Rango, having perhaps transcended this mortal veil after crossing The Road, speaks to The Spirit of the West, who looks like the Man with No Name, which means he looks like Clint Eastwood a long time ago (voiced by Timothy Olyphant). This, uh, Spirit drives a golf cart filled with pseudo-Oscars, uses a metal detector panning for something, and advises Rango to, I dunno, floss his teeth and do something for his friends.
If that doesn’t sound strange enough, well, be advised that there’s plenty more strangeness throughout. Perhaps enough to justify the endeavour, but I have to say that it didn’t really all come together for me.
It looks like no other computer animated flick that’s come out thus far. It’s far and away deliberately nothing like the stuff Dreamworks puts out (those wretched Shrek flicks that even my four-year-old can’t stand), the Blue Sky / Fox stuff (those wretched Ice Age flicks that my etc etc) or the Pixar stuff. Perhaps because it’s ILM / Lucasfilm, the effects/animation company George Lucas had a role in creating, responsible for the effects in all his flicks, perhaps that’s why all the characters look both substantially different and familiar. Because there’re a couple of characters that had me wondering “that looks like Jar Jar, that looks like a Wookie, that looks like Jabba the Slut, that looks like etc etc”
I wouldn’t say it’s a bad flick by any reasonable estimation. I wasn’t expecting or wanting a kid’s flick, but even I was surprised to the extent of which this wasn’t made with kids (or at least their reluctant parents) in mind at all. There are lines of dialogue here shitloads of adults won’t understand, not that they’ll care. All the same, something was certainly lacking in the story, regardless of how much of a visual and technological marvel it is. And it is a visual marvel, there’s no doubting that.
And the vocal work is all fine, I guess. Depp overacts like he does in virtually everything these days, made easier to endure by the masking of his Willy Wonka-like visage with the green, bulging-eyed image of a wonky reptile. Unlike virtually every girl/woman on the planet who gets moist at the mere mention of his name, I sometimes appreciate a break from having to look at his smug head.
Rango. Interesting. Not great. But interesting
6 ringing endorsements out of 10
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“Is this Heaven?
- “If it were, we'd be eating strawberry Pop-Tarts with Kim Novak.” – the hip kids are down with Kim Novak references, surely? – Rango
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