Rango

Rating: 4 Shurikens

Animation these days is quite amazing, at least the CGI stuff they put on movies. Some of the cartoons they put on television are sheer crap, but I digress. This is about Rango, the story of a terrarium lizard whose home is smashed on the road in the middle of the desert, leaving him lost and without direction. He stumbles upon a girl lizard of a similar but different species, who takes him to the town of Dirt. There, he finds adventure, heroism, a purpose to his life, and love.

The setting is the deserts of the American Southwest, and the time is the present. Johnny Depp does the voice of the Lizard called Rango, and it may be some of his best acting work ever. He was pretty decent in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and I enjoyed The Legend of Sleepy Hollow quite a lot, but his Jack Sparrow is weak and not very heroic. In Rango, he is convincing and brings a realistic voice to his character.

The story is a distillation of many recurring themes of Western movies across time. The characters are all animals, but they all have human archetypes, like the robber baron mayor, the western banker, hillbilly townsfolk, and gunslinging outlaws. Rango arrives in town, and tries hard to blend in and be accepted. In the middle of a drought, someone is buying up all the land. Only one landowner is left, and she won't sell the land left to her by her father. There isn't any hope, and the town is becoming more deserted by the day.

Rango, in his enthusiasm to win friends, weaves a tall story, convincing the people in the town bar that he is a dangerous outlaw himself. Somehow, Rango manages to defeat a serious threat to the town, and ends up a hero.When the bank is robbed of the last of the town's water, Rango forms a posse, and they ride into the desert. The mystery of what has happened to all the water for has to be solved, and Rango has to confront things that are far bigger than he had ever thought possible.

I'm not saying too much here, this is just the basic plot stuff. There are a lot of laughs as many Western movie cliches are exploited for their humorous potential, and there is really a good story with plot character interactions that make it a good story for all ages. The depiction of the Western skies at sunset and the star-filled night skies is fantastic. I have seen sunsets that were not as pretty. The desert locations reminded me of Death Valley. Visually, the backgrounds are true art.

The characters were not as appealing, being all grimy, but that would be the case in such dry conditions. The fur effects, eyes, and teeth were very realistic, and the mouth movements followed the speech perfectly. Mouth movements have got to be the most difficult task for animators. There were a few stereotypes in the movie, such as the little mariachi-singing birds who were convinced that Rango would not live to see the end of the movie, or the crow that was supposed to be an Indian. They didn't seem all that offensive to me, but some people might have thought differently.

There were some well-known voices behind the animals, like Ned Beatty, who played Lex Luther in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, as The Mayor. There was Harry Dean Stanton as Balthazar the Banker, who played in the original Alien in 1979, and was the holograph from the future in the Quantum Leap TV series. Then, there was Timothy Olyphant voicing the Spirit of the West, a character that is obviously patterned after Clint Eastwood. We just saw him in I Am Number Four. Isla Fischer, who I have never heard of, but still famous to others. does the voice of Beans, the girl lizard that Rango seems to fall for. And finally, Alfred Molina, who played Horvath in The Sorcerer's Apprentice is the voice of the armadillo that has been run over while trying to cross the road.

Rango is a pleasant animated comedy, with lots of satire and quite a bit of slapstick comedy, and some deeper humor. It is a good film, but I think it would have been over the heads of most young children. The nice thing about animated features is that they can be made to appeal to larger audiences. They can have things happen in them that can't be done with live action, like talking animals riding chickens as horses. Unfortunately, having talking animals is not enough to entertain little kids for almost two hours. I just didn't see this as a movie that I would want to take a five year old or younger to see, and possibly not even up to seven years old. For myself, I think it was quite entertaining, and it was worth the time to see it. It gets four Shurikens for a good story, some decent laughs, and animation artistry.