Review: Rango

There aren’t many films out there like Rango, though the film is certainly a hybrid thing, piling on references to spaghetti westerns, Chinatown and Looney Tunes. It’s such a dizzyingly creative mishmash of the weird and the familiar that it would be impressive not just to see it done well, but to see it done at all. Luckily for cinema fans, Rango emerges as a singularly strange CGI toon, one that somehow manages to combine gorgeous visual style with an offbeat Western tale, complete with gunslingers, men with no name and Hunter S. Thompson.

Johnny Depp portrays the titular character, a lizard in a terrarium who has taken the lack of company as an opportunity to stretch his creative muscles as an actor, attempting to find the right role for himself in the process. When he is violently jettisoned from the car in which he is traveling he is forced to wander the endless desert, facing hostile creatures and the elements, before discovering the town of Dirt. In keeping with such Westerns as “A Fistful of Dollars” (or its inspiration Yojimbo), this lizard with no name is instantly a figure of curiosity and suspicion within the town and through various mishaps somehow lands the job of town sheriff. Soon he is forced to deal with a criminal conspiracy that involves the water shortage facing the town, while trying to define himself and his identity within this harsh Western landscape.

Many of the film’s influences are plain to see simply from that synopsis. The villain of the piece at one point even responds to a question with the exact same line of dialogue used by John Huston in “Chinatown”, while the homages to Clint Eastwood westerns, Star Wars and Blazing Saddles are easily spotted. Fortunately director Gore Verbinski is able to take all these disparate elements and synthesize them into something that feels unique and fresh. For being comprised of such varied elements the film feels consistent, never jarring as it juggles various styles and tones. The closest film I can think of as a comparison would be Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, another genre-bending film that wears its influences proudly on its sleeve while still maintaining an identity all its own. As a result the film is constantly showing you something new, always dazzling with it’s ingenuity and wit.

Special mention must be made of the animation, as it’s among the most gorgeous ever seen in an animated film. The locales themselves look almost photo-real, designed in such a way as to evoke the dusty towns and wide open vistas of Western’s past. The characters themselves are unlike any seen in other CGI cartoons ostensibly for children. They are balanced perfectly between stylized creatures with more identifiable anthropomorphic features and a realistic look. The animal inhabitants of Dirt look dusty, dirty and hairy, yet they aren’t repulsive to look at. It’s is another odd design choice that pays big dividends for the audience, as these stylized creations fit right in with all the general weirdness happening in the film.

The voice cast is excellent all around. Johnny Depp gives another of his quirky outsider performances that have served him so well these past years, but he infuses Rango with an air cheerful goofiness, as the lizard desperately attempts to discover his role in the events unfolding before him. Isla Fisher is sweet and funny as a citizen of Dirt who befriends Rango in the desert. Other familiar names such as Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy and Alfred Molina all add personality to a film that is already bursting with it. Hans Zimmer’s score, in keeping with the rest of the film, is a twangy Western-influenced piece of work (complete with mariachi horns and Spanish guitar) that stands alongside the best work that he’s done in recent times.

Moviegoers of all ages should be happy that Rango exists. If more films were this gleefully strange and entertaining then Hollywood would be a much better place. Gore Verbinski has rebounded from the messy and chaotic final two Pirates of the Caribbean films an delivered an audacious treat, a film with the energy of a Looney Tunes short, the trappings of a traditional Western and the fevered subconscious of Jodorowsky. Though the playing field is pretty sparse, this wonderful film is the first great film of 2011. See it.