Review: Rango

A surprisingly bright movie with Depp at his best. Rango stands out from the growing crowd of digital animations with an imaginative take on the Western genre.

Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp reunite for a Western inspired animated feature, Depp playing the titular role and Verbinski directing the latest outing from Industrial Light and Magic (ILM); Rango. Flung from his tank when a car narrowly avoids a road accident, the previously unnamed chameleon arrives head first into the Western world of the Nevada desert, where a whole host of creatures live in the town of Dirt. He fancies himself something of an acting aficionado and moulds himself with a brand new personality, akin to classic ‘man with no name’ characters, even becoming Sheriff of the town. But how long can he keep up his act, or maybe just survive, when he must help the town’s water crisis and become the hero he claims to be?

Depp is as charismatic as ever, but only after he adopts his Rango persona. Prior to this he seems a little too helpless and panicky in his outsider role. Thankfully the change comes early, with tall tales of his prior success becoming more and more absurd and Rango finally becoming the entertainer he wants to be. Depp plays this character very well, giving us a solid mix of cultured and crazy, adding to what is a surprisingly sophisticated film, given the rather standard animation it has been marketed as.

I’m not saying misleading trailers are new to me, but at times this film caught me off guard with just how smart can sometimes be. The generic Western townsfolk interject with very elegant language that brings refreshing humour; we have an all-owl mariachi band guiding us through the story and when the film is self-aware (both as a Western, and as a movie itself) it has some very interesting moments. The film opens with Rango acting in his tank, arriving at a revelation that his character must encounter a life altering conflict in order to sustain audience interest. Immediately after this, he crashes out of his car and into a conflict with the environment around him.

Unfortunately, none of the supporting characters are at the same level as Rango. They aren’t particularly bad and none of them get lost in the shuffle in terms of what we see on screen, but they don’t stand out. Coming closest is an iguana named Beans (Isla Fisher), who is the first to see Rango when he arrives on the outskirts of Dirt. She’s more clued in than many of the others, revealing the water crisis everyone had been kept from, but once she joins Rango’s crew she becomes little more than bit-player. Action sequences are split between unimpressive running around affairs and ‘nobody move’, high tension standoffs which are far more effective.

Rango is the first full feature-length animation from special effects company Industrial Light & Magic, who previously have brought us effects in the likes of Star Wars and Harry Potter. It’s unsurprising then that visually, this a striking film. Great texture in the scales and hair of the creatures; bright, vibrant landscapes of the desert, ILM even manage to give us Monument Valley as a nod and a wink to the Westerns of John Ford. The sound is original, composed by Hans Zimmer, but harks back to the days of Ennio Marricone and all the Western conventions work well with their new, animal inhabitants (shots of cactus juice are an interesting substitute for scotch or moonshine).

It’s by no means anything new, Rango is littered with established iconography and references, but don’t let that convince you it’s just a simple retelling of old stories lumped together with a lick of CGI paint. It displays a self-awareness not seen in many animated movies and contains a refreshing premise; a ‘fish out of water’ movie where the character lands in unknown territory rather than on the road trying to get home. It isn’t a solid classic, but it is a very welcome surprise.