To describe a film like the Western-themed animated feature Rango as “family entertainment” would be somewhat misleading. Toy Story has proved to be the gold standard for Gen Y family films, because it is accessible to nearly every member of a given family and for the same reasons: parents and children alike will be terrified of the sadistic toy-torturer Sid, empathize with space ranger Buzz Lightyear, and leap for joy when at long last cowboy Woody is restored to his rightful owner. Rango is more like a children’s rec center with a built-in smoking partition for bored parents. Its comedy is evenly divided into two distinct low-brow strains: borscht belt scatology and silly, purple prose dialogue for the adults; and farts, funny faces, kinetic flailing, and another wacky Johnny Depp performance for the kids.
Rango himself is a loquacious, pot-bellied, bipedal chameleon who dreams of becoming a Shakespearean actor. He sounds at times like Kermit the Frog, at other times Johnny Depp, and has an affinity for Hawaiian shirts. When he stumbles upon a drought-riddled town made up of tiny creatures personified as Old West stock characters, he reinvents himself as a rugged cowboy hero and sets out to capture a family of water-poaching moles. But soon enough, he uncovers a water-dumping conspiracy headed up by the town’s sinister mayor (voice of Ned Beatty). And by “a” water-dumping conspiracy, I mean “the” water-dumping conspiracy from Chinatown (which isn’t strictly a Western).
But the filmmakers’ fascination with pastiche doesn’t end there. Rango teems with carefully directed, animated, scored, and edited homages to classic films — many of which are not Westerns — and virtually none of them are in any way thematically warranted. In other words, Rango does not quote Apocalypse Now, Chinatown, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as a means of commenting upon Westerns, but because “references to things are funny.” I suppose that these sequences have been included as another “cigarette break” for film-literate parents, but then again, “grown up” viewers able to conceptualize such a thing as a meta-Western may actually find the tactic cheap, might find Man With No Name references to be a bit passé.
The brief capsule summary provided earlier in this review could actually be described as a “detailed synopsis” of the film: Rango is light on plot, but for good reason. Rather than rewarding younger viewers for paying attention and punishing them for having short attention spans, Rango indulges the impetuous and caffeine-addled children — both those in our care and that we are — by drifting aimlessly and manically from plot thread to plot thread, weaving in enough detail-obsessive sight gags to incite mass seizures. The film’s psychedelic opening sequence is almost difficult to get through, as it features an unending onslaught of torturous fingernails on chalkboards, crinkling glass, and other variously unpleasant sounds.
The look of the film is impeccable, especially in terms of its character designs, which, though they are intentionally ugly, are quite beautifully designed — note the attention paid to amphibian and reptile skin textures, everybody’s eyes and hair, even Rango’s tongue — and its animation direction is fluid and cinematic, thanks in no small part to cinematography consultant Roger Deakins. But any attempts at economic storytelling or character construction are perpetually subordinated to director Gore Verbinski and screenwriter John Logan’s desperation to please viewers possessed of very short attention spans.
Finally, one of the film’s most disappointing features is the performance of Depp, an actor whose career has often been beset by performances either too boring or too freewheeling for their own good. His Rango surely falls in with the latter group. The general lack of restraint is most apparent when Depp seems to channel virtually every bonkers character he’s ever played, from Ed Wood and Willy Wonka to Raoul Duke and Jack Sparrow. There’s even something mildly condescending about these performances: it evinces the quality of a respected actor taking a pay cut to appear in a Pantomime for the benefit of his kids. You expect him to say “should I rub the lamp, kids?” at any moment.
