Weird west new vegas1/28/2024 ![]() There are a few on-screen deaths that younger children may find upsetting as well as a few mystical, hallucinatory scenes that will probably confuse them. ![]() ![]() For that reason, it doesn’t soar as high as Pixar or Dreamworks at their best.ĭespite the light-hearted scenes showcased in trailers for the film, Rango isn’t afraid to go to dark places. Rango also doesn’t manage to reconcile the bits for the kids and the bits for the grown-ups quite as well as, say The Incredibles or the first two Shrek movies. The plot and its execution, sadly, are nowhere near as original as look of the film. The great Ned Beatty as the town patriarch channels the oily gravitas of John Huston in Chinatown while Bill Nighy oozes pure menace as Rattlesnake Jake.ĭespite the excellent voice acting and the visual splendour, Rango is let down by a pedestrian story and lacklustre writing. Apart from Depp, Rango skips cameos by big name celebrities and uses reliable character actors such as Harry Dean Stanton and Alfred Molina instead. There’s chemistry between the cast that is missing from most big-budget animated films where it is rare for the voice actors to ever meet.ĭepp is at his quirky, comical best as Rango, a smooth-talking yet nervy lizard seeking reinvention as a fearless reptile with no name. One reason for this is that Verbinski chose to bring them all together on a stage for motion capture and voice recording. The actors behind these characters infuse them with believable life and emotion. Rango himself is an awkward, gangly creature with bug eyes. The scaly and furry varmints of Rango are endearingly ugly creations - many of them scarred and snaggletoothed with chewing tobacco-stained chins. Clint Eastwood with bug eyes (click to enlarge)īut it is the fantastically drawn and animated menagerie of desert critters that gives Rango such a strong identity of its own. Its panoramic desert landscapes evoke the harsh, parched deserts and lawless frontier towns of the West as vividly as any Sergio Leone movie. Rango’s strongest point is a bold visual style that will remind gamers strongly of Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, a videogame set in a similarly weird Wild West animal kingdom. It is a desperate place, besieged by desperado hawks and rattlesnakes, and bled dry of the water it needs to sustain life. He stumbles upon the town of Dirt, where he claims the job of sheriff and tries to become gunslinging hero to the townsfolk. ![]() It’s an uneven but enjoyable pastiche of the genre that winks slyly at films such as The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and Django.ĭepp voices Rango, a skittish pet lizard that finds himself lost in the Mojave Desert after his terrarium is shattered when his owners are involved in a car crash. The film reunites Johnny Depp with his Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski in the sort of movie that the Spaghetti Western-loving Quentin Tarantino might have stitched together if he made a computer animated feature. Mash it all up and serve with a helping of knowing irony to prepare a serving of Rango, perhaps the strangest children’s film you’ll see from Hollywood this year. Take the basic plot of Chinatown, throw in A Fistful of Dollars and add a pinch of Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.
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