Today’s animated films walk a tightrope between entertaining the kiddies and keeping their parents awake.
The best of the best, namely the Pixar features like “Up,” delight both demographics.
“Rango” may look like its cut from the same CGI cloth, but this story of a lizard with no name is far more interested in tantalizing the adults in the crowd.
That it succeeds is a testament to a voice actor at the prime of his powers and a director unwilling to compromise to appease the youngest of movie goers.
Our lizard hero (voiced by Johnny Depp) is a frustrated actor working within the confines of his aquarium space. When his unseen owners take a road trip near the Mojave Desert they bring his aquarium along for some odd reason. One traffic calamity later, and the lizard’s entire world comes crashing to the street, setting him free.
He finds his way to the small town of Dirt, a place where the water supply is almost gone. Our friendly lizard starts spinning tall tales about himself to the locals, and before long he’s become a legend to small towners eager for a ray of hope in their lives. But can the lizard, who dubs himself Rango on a lark, deliver on his fanciful promise to find a new water supply to save the town?
“Rango” is a meditation on faith, the need to believe in something and the corrupting power of total control. The story also touches on the universal quest to forge one’s own identity.
“Enlightenment. We are nothing without it,” says a wizened armadillo (Alfred Molina) early in the film.
Hardly sounds like child’s play.
At times, it isn’t. The oft-scary visuals, including a menacing snake voiced by Bill Nighy, could make children dash for their parents’ bedrooms in the middle of the night.
Director Gore Verbinksi (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) keeps the action light without disrupting the meaty themes afoot. The dialogue bubbles with comic energy, including a nod to The Man with No Name, and a quick visual gag pays homage to Depp’s idol, Hunter S. Thompson. The dazzling animation complements the verbal trickery at every step.
The character design can stand tall next to Pixar’s mightiest achievements, although the collection of lizards, hedgehogs and other unsavory beasts assembled here fall heavily on the gritty side of the ledger.
Depp, whose recent screen performances have been either predictably wacky (“Alice in Wonderland”) or comatose (“The Tourist”), is sheer perfection as the voice of Rango. He’s almost upstaged by Ned Beatty, Hollywood’s new go-to voice actor last heard in “Toy Story 3,” who plays Dirt’s avuncular mayor.
The film’s middle sags markedly as the townsfolk, led by newly christened Sheriff Rango, set out in search of water. The real story conflict lies elsewhere, so these moments merely try our collective patience.
“Rango” is a western told with zeroes and ones, a saga of redemption with a crooked-necked lizard as the man wearing the white hat. It’s unlike anything seen in animated circles before, pardner.
(Photo: Johnny Depp gives voice to “Rango,” a chameleon who puts his acting skills to use when he ends up in a town desperate for rain water. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures)
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Brilliant. Can’t wait to see it.