Monday, February 28, 2011

Trippy Movie Review: Rango

This evening, good people, I saw Rango.

And that is one weird movie. A rip-roaring good time, to be sure, with goofy action to entertain the children and some big-worded, rather naughty jokes for the grown-ups. But weird.

It features:


  • A perfect classic wild west movie town in miniature, made out of bits of rubbish and inhabited by lovingly detailed and astonishingly grizzled desert animals
  • Johnny Depp as a lonely lizard with big dreams who becomes the unlikely sheriff of the town
  • A mariachi band of owls who continually predict the lizard's tragic death
  • A posse (of course)
  • A wild wagon chase (of course!)
  • Let's just say basically every western movie cliche, carefully redone with small animals (but of course)
  • Bats out in the daytime, which bothered me slightly because they must have been unhappy
  • A truly surreal visionary conversation with the truly legendary Spirit of the West
  • Walking cactuses
  • Ever so many romantic misunderstandings (OK, not all that many)
  • No library, sadly
  • The helpful health-related advice that an arrow through the eye is not necessarily much of an inconvenience, although conjunctivitis is a bit disconcerting to others
  • A show-down! (of course)
  • A reminder that water is extremely important in the desert, and golf courses in the desert are...kind of evil

The animation was very nice, with beautiful detail and some really lovely scenery. Lots of clever visual jokes with the buildings being made up of pieces of recognizable items, like a Pepto-Bismol bottle, the Telechron face on the clock tower (those things are collectible, you know), and so forth.

And it was kind of worth it just for the meeting with the Spirit of the West. 

Man, that was bizarre. Awesomely bizarre.

This movie was like a combination of classic western and light-hearted fever dream. 

.

1 comment:

Belinda said...

Sounds excellent, can't wait to see it. Depp seems to be quite the fan of odd films. I liked him in "Fear and Loathing" which must be one of the best psychedelic movies I've seen to date.