Review of Rango (2011) by Stevenf — 01 Nov 2013

What a glorious surprise ‘Rango’ turned out to be, it isn’t a dumbed down animated comedy or a family-oriented cartoon, its a very smart and beautifully rendered adventure that is a treat to look at, with a vast array of colourful and larger than life characters that look bright and cheerful as they light up the already bright screen.

The setting of of the film is first and foremost, a Western, it delivers subtle but also not so subtle nods to the genre that defined an era, even if you haven’t seen the many films it borrows its content from, there is still enough to like about it, especially Rango himself.

Johnny Depp lends his voice to the character, a run of the mill lizard, but his journey to an unknown location is disrupted after a roadkill, so he ends up deceiving his way into a local town called Dirt, which is running dangerously low on water supply while also being held under fear from the various villainous creatures of the town.

As the film progresses, its clear to see the linear it follows, much the same as a Western, it has the stranger who isn’t part of the town, he breaks social order by confronting the rulers of the town, while he also has the chance to become honest.

Rango tries his best to pull the wool over the eyes of the citizens, but birds, snakes and other unsavoury creatures make this quite difficult. Each character has been excellently brought to life through their voice actor, and through their relevant roles on screen, Bill Nighy and Ray Winstone are the ideal villainous cretins who terrorise the town, so Ned Beatty’s mayor decides that Rango should wear the Sheriff’s badge.

The witty and smartly-drawn humour of the film is brilliant, it’s sort of a grown-up animation that has a variety of deadpan humour. Director Gore Verbinski shows his skills when commanding the great action sequences, there is a delightful chase sequence in the many canyons of the wild west that sums up the brilliance of the whole film, fast-talking, fast-paced and full of characters who could easily belong in a real film, they have limitless amounts of energy while the film has limitless amounts of opportunities to parody classical films such as Apocalypse Now and the endless amount of Westerns, it even use the talents of Timothy Olyphant to nod in the direction of the “Man With No Name”.

This is a surprising and uplifting comedy that is colourful, breathtaking to look at and definitely raises the bar for a first rate story along with some excellent involvement of Hollywood stars, they bring the added flavour to the characters involved as Rango tries to figure out the water problem.

Beauty and first-rate entertainment at its finest.