Film Review: Rango

Quentin Tarantino recently announced that his next film is supposed to be a full-fledged western, a genre that Joel & Ethan Coen recently succeeded in. Immediate fears were that Tarantino would suffocate the revived genre in pastiche, but it looks like Gore Verbinski already beat him to the punch. Rango has been slowly receiving praise across the past week, and it's brought into question whether or not this would actually be worth my time. My initial feeling upon gathered trailers and clips was negative, but my inspiration had been piqued by Hans Zimmer's score. So I'm going to get it out of the way that I didn't exactly hate this film, but I find it hard to say it's good.

The film is about a nameless and lonely chameleon who has spent his life in a glass box, and then is thrown into the wild west in a disastrous car accident. Upon stumbling into the town of Dirt, he makes up an identity as the notorious hero Rango, and after accidentally killing the hawk, is crowned sheriff. Then the dwindling water bank is robbed, and Rango sets out with his posse to find the culprit, even though it's kind of his fault. Happenstance lands him upon a world of corruption, power, and control, and he has to decide if he's really the man he's been pretending to be, or nothing at all.

Rango does have a lot of things going for it, and that attributes it to being the most obviously entertaining film of 2011 thus far. It's fitting to bring us into the next part of the year, where we actually get to some real quality. The action in a few scenes is quite sporadic and entertaining, and it's occasionally epic at the level of Avatar. I use that comparison to the fullest way possible, because the two films really go hand in hand for me. Jake Sully and Rango are very much the same character, with my favor heading in the latter's direction. Rango does have an inherent charm to him, because he's basically an actor. He can fashion one hell of a story, and is great at ad-libbing his way out of a sticky situation. That does cause a bit of isolation, because it often feels like he's not his own character. He's just an empty shell.

The western elements of this feature are part of my biggest problem with the feature, because the western genre is a tricky genre to parody. It thrives on authenticity and not the simple trickery that this film relies on so completely. It ultimately just doesn't work in the way it should, and makes me feel sorry for the filmmakers who've put so much effort into reviving this genre. This is a feature more in the vein of Robert Rodriguez than the Coen Brothers, and it fails as a western. There are some nice visuals that look kind of pretty, but the animation of the characters is so off. The mammals look quite honestly fake, including the spirit of the west, even if they're only animated characters. It takes us out of the film, which is the cardinal sin of filmmaking. As for the reptiles, they are just hideous creations and so ultimately unattractive. It's hard to put your faith behind such an unappealing character. Ratatouille had this sort of risk, but it made the rat characters look likable and relatable.

The heart of Rango is missing, if it even exists. There seems to be potential on the start of the film, but it's ultimately drowned in existential musings and meaningless detours. Besides that, this was just completely predictable. At the onset of each respective scene, I could tell that the bottle was empty, he'd cross the road unharmed, and the bullet breaks the glass. Not to mention that this is just an original feature, taking quite obviously from the recently remade True Grit in terms of the character Beans (Isla Fisher). There are also stale allusions to The Village, the only kind of allusion for that particular feature. There are saving graces of this film that make it entertaining, Hans Zimmer's score being the main one. What John Powell did with How to Train Your Dragon a year ago, Zimmer does for Rango, elevating all the proceedings with precision to the material. The mild entertainment of the combination of visuals, music, and easy jokes will get people through to the end, and kids will honestly eat this up. The adults in the audience will find the moral ambiguity of certain scenes the most appealing, and by that I am of course speaking of Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy). He is the most entertaining character of this film. Ultimately, I find myself caught in the middle, not necessarily wanting to like it, but liking it for certain details. It's the most entertaining of the year thus far, and I can say that with confidence.

B