Ryan McNeil
It must have been tempting to load up the film with shot after shot of that amusing lizard’s face. It must have been tempting to stack a voice-talent cast with A-Listers. And it must have been tempting to have a whole bunch of zany characters run around a western town and pretend to be cowboys.
It’s refreshing to see an animated feature that avoids those temptations, and creates something novel.
RANGO begins with our titular hero (voiced by Johnny Depp) unceremoniously getting bounced out of his owner’s car. He finds himself on the side of the highway in the middle of the Mojave desert, and after molting his scales from the heat once or twice, he quickly deduces that he needs to find help. A spiritual armadillo (Alfred Molina) points him towards the town of Dirt, where he hopes to get a bit of assistance and get on his way.
But on his way to Dirt, he meets Beans (Isla Fisher): a fiesty lizard trying desperately to hold on to her ranch. Though Beans he learns that Dirt is in trouble – its water is in short supply. Not to be deterred, Rango makes his way into Dirt and through a lot of smooth talking, and some lucky bits of bravery, establishes himself as the town sheriff.
What Rango doesn’t know is that sheriffs don’t last very long in this town. Not while its citizens literally pray for rain, and certainly not while its mayor seems unconcerned with its drought and seems to turn a blind eye to the vagrants that come and go. But none of this matters to Rango. He soon forgets about wanting to get help and get home, and relishes his new station in life. He even has an idea or two on who to round up the varmints intimidating the townsfolk.
Now if only he could learn to shoot.
RANGO (the film) is interested in how we reinvent ourselves given the opportunity. A stranger in a strange town is automatically fascinating to everyone since it represents a shuffling of the status quo. In this situation, Rango (the lizard) sees an opportunity to become something different – which he begins by taking on a whole new name. It’s akin to moving on to high school after college and burying things about your past that held you back socially. Both Rango (the lizard) and RANGO (the film) understand that sometimes all it takes is talking a good game, and the rest might fall into place…with a lot of luck.
It’s a film that is completely self-aware. Right off the start, RANGO tells us that our protagonist knows his limitations as our hero. Heck, he’s feeling a drift in his own terrarium…whaddaya think is gonna happen when he eventually makes his way out into the wild? By having our hero declare his struggles with his role, and what he understands about story structure the film has given us a nod and bought us a drink. With that out of the way, we drop our guard and allow it to charm us. And charm us it does!
As if to prove his work on HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON was no fluke, Roger Deakins provides more wonderful work as a visual consultant in this film, and it makes all the difference. While just about every bit of CG animation these days prides itself on being lush and vibrant, Deakins and Verbinski understand that to really sell this story, they need to put us in the vast aridness of the Mojave. Thus, everything in RANGO is bright, high-key, and bleached. From the dust that kicks up with every character’s step, to the sun-flares that accompany every upward camera shot, RANGO has established a unique animated setting and built outwards from there.
The only thing that could handcuff RANGO is that its core audience won’t know what to make of it. The screening I attended was full of kids, and they really weren’t laughing at all the meta humour. Likewise it must be noted that westerns with a classic structure (read: not 3:10 TO YUMA) don’t tend to fare all that well with modern audiences. So even though the usual slow incline is dotted with a chase here and a gunfight there, the grown-ups in my screening seemed to be caught off-guard as well.
Thus, If I were to sum RANGO up into one word, it would be “unexpected”. This is a film that very easily could have leaned back on celebrity voices leading the way while a manic lizard running around a one-horse-town. Instead, RANGO does something different. It becomes an animated western not just via cartoon cowboy hats, but by following the tones and structure of the great westerns that have come before it. From allusions (of which there are many) to structure, one could very easily imagine much of this story being told using Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper or John Wayne.