Rango (2011) ****/*****

To hear it explained in a couple sentences or less, it would seem like Rango was a pretty typical entry into the modern, computer animated movie about talking animals genre. It tells the tale of a pet chameleon who finds himself separated from his owners and alone in the desert. He wanders into a small town of other animals, gets made their sheriff, and embarks on an adventure to save the town’s water supply. In addition to sounding like it could fit anywhere in the DreamWorks or Pixar catalogue, Rango also has a lot in common with the archetypical western. It tells the story of a stranger who comes to town, runs afoul of the criminal element, and ends up changing the lives of the townsfolk for the better. But this isn’t a movie that’s about its story. Rango is a film that’s about cultivating a unique personality. It’s about mood, character, and quirkiness. It has an interesting look, off the wall characters, and quick, clever dialogue. Despite being built on a solid, standard structure, the thing that you remember most after seeing Rango is that it was really weird. Often delightfully so.

When we’re first introduced to the title character chameleon he is alone is his glass tank directing a sort of imaginary film production whose cast is the odds and ends that make up his only company: a plastic fish, a drink umbrella, a dead bug, a doll torso. His life is lonely, and he copes through escapism. Everything he experiences is a potential plotline to explore, a new character that me might take on. After an unforeseen disaster rips him out of his lonely existence and throws him into a dangerous western town, things get hairy. One might imagine a lonely film nerd shrinking in such a situation, but our hero uses his ability to play characters and create stories to paint himself as something of a folk hero, and things progress from there. Johnny Depp voices Rango, and his performance is outstanding. There is a lot of that quirkiness for quirkiness’ sake that has bled into most of his modern work, but here, in a cartoon, it feels completely at home. He goes through his usual gamut of silly voices, strange deliveries, and weird warbles; but he’s always able to center the eccentricities on a well-defined character and an emotionally grounded vocal performance. A lot of people have been comparing Rango to Depp’s portrayal of Hunter S. Thompson, and there is a lot of that here; but Rango is a bit more of a lovable loser than I think someone as magnetic as Johnny Depp could pull off in live action. He’s less cool than anyone we’ve seen Depp play before. If there were to be a human version of this character I would see him being portrayed by Don Knotts, and it would be wonderful.

The supporting characters all do just that, support Depp in his efforts at anchoring an enjoyable movie. The first character that made a big impression on me was Beans, the female lizard that becomes a sort of love interest. From the second that she shows up on screen and starts to spit a string of adeptly delivered, personality filled, and rapid-fire colloquial dialogue, I was straining to hear who was doing the voice. The best approximation I could manage was Holly Hunter delivering the Coens’ words, but I knew that wasn’t right. When the credits rolled and I saw that it was Isla Fisher I was kind of shocked. She impressed me with her comedic chops in Wedding Crashers, but that performance was mostly just manic and wacky; I hadn’t imagined she had this sort of nuanced character work inside of her. In addition to Fisher, there is just a boatload of great actors that show up along the way, and recognizing their voices became a bit of a game to me. We get Ned Beatty playing a similar role as his corrupt authority figure from Toy Story 3 as the town mayor. A mystical and mysterious Alfred Molina playing a piece of road kill. Bill Nighy chewing ridiculous amounts of scenery as the villainous Rattlesnake Jake. Ray Winstone lending that Ray Winstone gruffness to lumpy goon Bad Bill. Stephen Root being comedically awesome as Doc. And, for a brief moment, Timothy Olyphant growling though a fun cameo as The Spirit of the West. The voice work here is beyond strong, and I imagine the level of talent compiled has to be attributed to director Gore Verbinski’s growing reputation as one of the great working filmmakers.

Visually, Rango stands a bit apart from the recent rash of animated films that have been released. While many of those films have design work that ranges from great to stunning, they all end up as a perfectly polished product. Here the look is a bit looser, a bit more hand crafted. The animation of the film is skillful, the design work gorgeous, but it feels more like stunning artwork than an immersive world that you take for granted. Rango is more artistic exploration than it is a pointed production. And seeing as the film’s look is at least somewhat inspired by the Gonzo illustrations of frequent Hunter S. Thompson collaborator Ralph Steadman, that approach feels appropriate. That being said, animation will always be a very controlled medium to work in, and it’s clear that a lot of thought went into the look of this film. There is a scene where Rango sits in a waiting area outside of the evil mayor’s office. He is sat between two paintings that both have subjects aiming weapons at him. That sort of storytelling through production design reminded me of the little touches in Wes Anderson films. Despite the deliberate imperfections in the style of the film’s art, somebody went to great lengths crafting things from a storyboarding perspective. What this all boils down to, I guess, is that the film looked good. My eyeballs were pleased.

Adding a great deal to the aforementioned weirdness of Rango are the myriad references to things that will sail directly over the heads of an audience of children. Or, more specifically, there are references to things that will sail over the heads of an audience of children’s parents. It starts with a cameo from an animated version of Depp and Benicio Del Toro’s characters from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and then things proceed to get winkier from there. Without making a huge effort to keep count I recall visual references to several Spaghetti Westerns, plot points from Chinatown, we get a jug band version of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” during an air raid sequence, there are shots lifted from Verbinski’s own Pirates movies, the Dick Dale surf rock song famously used in Pulp Fiction plays over the end credits. And to top it all off, when we meet this movie’s version of The Great Pumpkin, a mythic entity called The Spirit of the West, he is an animated version of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name. The main character is a film nerd, and the intended audience seems to be film nerds as well. While a kid might be base level entertained by the talking animals and bits of action, they are going to understand almost none of the humor; and neither will their moms and dads. What we have here is a sort of animated Breathless. This isn’t a movie for kids; it’s a movie for hipsters.

And along with that focus on mature film and culture references comes some mature subject matter as well. To be honest, most everything that is in this movie is going to fly completely past kids without it even occurring to them that they might be seeing something inappropriate, and I would have no problem taking my kids to see Rango if I had any, but I could see some of the more uppity parenting types getting squeamish at certain points. At one point Rango punches a female character in the face and knocks her out: as a joke. This is that kind of movie. Swear words are barely muted at another point, and I believe I heard a reference to having testicles spoken in Spanish slang. Guns are pointed to character’s heads. There are jokes about prostates, jokes about masturbation. The mariachi owls that narrate the film hang themselves from nooses. All of this stuff is presented very subtly, with a good natured attitude, and it comes so quick you barely notice it; but when you stack it all up and analyze it at the same time you realize there’s a lot of stuff some people might not want their kids to be exposed to packed into one animated film. Those people are totally wimps, but it should be noted.

An opinion overview: I felt like Rango had some pacing issues. There were several points where I felt like it could have moved things along faster than it did. Specifically, the first act takes longer than it should have to get the conflict introduced. And then once things do get moving, there were a few moments where I checked out somewhere in the middle as well. The actual plot is so cookie-cutter and well worn that when something nutty and head scratching isn’t happening you can get kind of bored. But these moments are fleeting, and there was a lot of stuff I really responded to that more than made up for them. I’ve already talked about some of the film’s finer points in its performances and look, but there were a couple other things that stood out enough to mention as well. Firstly, the music is amazing. The score goes from up tempo western music that sounded like it would have been at home in Raising Arizona, to orchestral tracks, to songs that sound like Ween’s “Buenos Tardes Amigo”, to subtler atmospheric stuff that would be at home inserted into any Sophia Coppola movie. It was incredibly varied, but always awesome. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this movie nominated for music awards a year from now. With this and his work on Inception last year, Hans Zimmer is really on a roll. Secondly, there is a sequence where a disheartened and broken Rango ventures out into the desert at night to soul search that was beautiful. The feeling of solitude and overwhelming awe at the scope of the world and how daunting a task traversing it is was masterfully conveyed and beyond anything you’re going to see in 99% of animated movies. It was one of my favorite individual scenes in a film in quite some time. And that’s kind of what Rango is; a patchwork of beautiful things that doesn’t quite congeal into a perfect whole, but that is an interesting and enjoyable experience all the way through.