Psycho's Movie Reviews #135: RANGO (2011)

Rango is a 2011 American computer-animated Western comedy film directed by Gore Verbinski from a screenplay by John Logan. Co-produced by Verbinski with Graham King and John B. Carls, the film stars the voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Stephen Root, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, and Timothy Olyphant. The film's plot centers on Rango, a chameleon who accidentally ends up in the town of Dirt, an outpost that is in desperate need of a new sheriff. Rango was produced by Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, Verbinski's Blind Wink Productions, King's GK Films, and Industrial Light & Magic.

Rango premiered at Westwood on February 14, 2011, and was released in the United States on March 4, 2011, by Paramount Pictures to strongly positive reviews. The film was both a major critical and commercial success, grossing $245.7 million against a budget of $135 million. At the 84th Academy Awards, the film won Best Animated Feature, making it the first non-Disney or Pixar film to win since 2006's Happy Feet, and the last one to win until 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Plot

A pet chameleon becomes stranded in the Mojave Desert after his terrarium falls from his owners' car due to an accident. On the highway, he meets the cause of the accident, a nine-banded armadillo named Roadkill who is seeking the mystical "Spirit of the West" by trying to get to "the other side" (metaphor for the afterlife). After telling him that he is looking for water, Roadkill tells him of "Dirt", an Old West town where it is said that water comes in through a mysterious rite on Wednesdays, but unfortunately, it is far out into the desert. Seeing no other options, he walks out into the desert. While wandering the desert, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a vicious red-tailed hawk before meeting Beans, a desert iguana, who takes him to Dirt.

Asked about his identity, the chameleon presents himself to the townsfolk as a tough drifter named Rango, lying about killing a feared gang known as the Jenkins Brothers using only one bullet. He quickly runs afoul of Gila monster outlaw Bad Bill but avoids a shootout when Bill is scared off by the hawk's return. Rango is then chased by the hawk until he reaches an empty water tower that Rango accidentally knocks down and causes it crush the hawk to death. For defeating it, the town's elderly desert tortoise mayor appoints Rango as the town's new sheriff. Meanwhile, the townsfolk worry that with the hawk dead, the infamous gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake (who fears predators such as said hawk) will return.

After discovering that Dirt is in the midst of a drought and its only water supply, which is stored in the town bank inside a water cooler bottle, to be nearly empty, a sceptical Beans demands that Rango investigates where the water has gone. That night, Rango inadvertently assists a trio of bank robbers led by a mole named Balthazar, mistaking them for prospectors. The townsfolk find the bank's bottle stolen the next morning, so Rango organizes a posse. During the search, they find the banker, Johannes Merrimack III, to be dead in the middle of the desert, but oddly enough, the cause of his death was from drowning. The posse tracks the robbers to their hideout in a canyon, where they fight Balthazar's bat-riding clan over the stolen water bottle before discovering it to be empty. The robbers profess that they found it empty, but the posse still takes them into custody.

Rango questions the mayor about his buying of the land around Dirt, but he denies any wrongdoing and shows Rango that he is building a modern city with the purchased land. He later summons Rattlesnake Jake, who runs Rango out of town after forcing him to admit his lies to the townsfolk. A dejected Rango returns to the highway and crosses to the other side amidst the heavy traffic before passing out and being taken away by a multitude of pill bugs. Waking up the next morning, Rango meets the Spirit of the West, appearing as an elderly Man with No Name. After telling him what he did to the citizens of Dirt, the spirit tells Rango that he must go back and set things right, telling him that "No man can walk out on his own story".

With the aid of Roadkill and mystical moving yuccas, Rango discovers an emergency shut-off valve in a water pipeline to Las Vegas, which the mayor has been manipulating to cause the water shortage so he could buy the land for himself. The rejuvenated Rango returns to Dirt to challenge Jake to a duel, a diversion so the yuccas can turn the pipeline's valve to bring the water back to town and allow Rango to make his resolve clear to Jake. However, the mayor forces Rango to surrender by threatening Beans' life before the duo are locked inside the bank's vault to be drowned. He then prepares to shoot Jake with Rango's gun, intending to kill him along with the rest of the Old West, but Rango has taken its only bullet, which he uses to shatter the vault's glass door, freeing himself and Beans. Impressed, Jake salutes Rango for proving his heroism before dragging the mayor out of town to murder him for his deception. The citizens of Dirt celebrate the return of their water supply and Rango is recognized as a true hero.

Production

During production, the actors and actresses received costumes and sets in order to "give them the feel of the Wild West"; star Johnny Depp had 20 days in which to voice Rango; and the filmmakers scheduled the supporting actors to interact with him. Verbinski said his attempt with Rango was to do a "small" film after the first three large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but that he underestimated how painstaking, time-consuming and expensive animated filmmaking is. Paramount stepped in at the last possible minute as Verbinski's slim financing was about to run out.

Unlike many studio animation projects produced since Avatar, Rango was shot in 2D, not 3D, as the budget wouldn't allow for it and Verbinski didn't want to do a "half-assed 3D."

The film contains a number of references to movie Westerns and other films, including The Shakiest Gun in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, Chinatown, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cat Ballou, Raising Arizona and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; as well as references to earlier ILM work including the dogfight in the Death Star trench in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Verbinski has also cited El Topo as an influence on the film.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Rango's teaser trailer was released on June 9, 2010, alongside the film's official site RangoMovie.com. It depicted an open desert highway and Mr. Timms, Rango’s orange, wind-up plastic fish floating slowly across the road. On June 28, 2010, the first poster was released showing the main character Rango. A two-minute film trailer was released June 29, 2010. Another trailer was released December 14, 2010. A 30-second spot was made specifically to run during Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011.

The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 15, 2011. The release had been produced as a two-disc Blu-ray, DVD, and "Digital Copy" combo pack with both the theatrical and an extended version of the film, cast and crew commentary, deleted scenes, and featurettes.

The extended version adds a final scene in which the flooded town is now a beach resort renamed Mud and Rango rides out to deal with news that Bad Bill is causing trouble elsewhere.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an 88% approval rating based on 222 reviews, with an average rating of 7.60/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Rango is a smart, giddily creative burst of beautifully animated entertainment, and Johnny Depp gives a colourful vocal performance as a household pet in an unfamiliar world." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on reviews from 35 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Richard Corliss of Time applauded the "savvy humour" and called the voice actors "flat-out flawless." He later named it one of the 10 best movies of 2011, saying, "In a strong year for animation... Rango was the coolest, funniest and dagnab-orneriest of the bunch." Bob Mondello of National Public Radio observed that "Rango's not just a kiddie-flick (though it has enough silly slapstick to qualify as a pretty good one). It's a real movie lover's movie, conceived as a Blazing Saddles-like comic commentary on genre that's as back-lot savvy as it is light in the saddle." Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, noting the nervous but improvising hero's resemblance to the Don Knotts character in The Shakiest Gun in the West, echoed this, saying that "with healthy doses of Carlos Castaneda, Sergio Leone, Chuck Jones and Chinatown... this is the kid-movie equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino picture. There's no gory violence or swearing, of course, but there sure is a film buff's parade of great movie moments." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars calling the film "some kind of a miracle: An animated comedy for smart moviegoers, wonderfully made, great to look at, wickedly satirical... The movie respects the tradition of painstakingly drawn animated classics, and does interesting things with space and perspective with its wild action sequences."

After praising "the brilliance of its visuals," Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The narrative isn't really dramatic, but more like a succession of picturesque notions that might have flowed from DreamWorks or Pixar while their story departments were out to lunch."

In one of the more negative reviews, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune acknowledged its "considerable care and craft" but called it "completely soulless" and that watching it "with a big suburban preview audience was instructive. Not much laughter. Moans and sobs of pre-teen fright whenever Rattlesnake Jake slithered into view, threatening murder."

Rango earned $123,477,607 in North America and $122,246,996 in other countries for a total $245,724,603. It is the 23rd-highest-grossing film of 2011 worldwide.

In North America, Rango debuted in 3,917 theatres, grossing $9,608,091 on its first day and $38,079,323 during its opening weekend, ranking number one at the box office. On March 26, 2011, it became the first film of 2011 to cross the $100 million mark in North America.

In markets outside North America, during its first weekend, it earned $16,770,243 in 33 countries. It topped the international box office two times in March 2011. Although the film did not double its budget, it was declared a success by Paramount which subsequently announced the formation of its own animation department.

Budget $135 million

Box office $245.7 million

My Review

This movie perhaps already is one of the biggest surprises of the year. It's a way better and more entertaining movie that you at beforehand would expect and on top of that, it's great looking and really wonderfully and professionally put together by director Gore Verbinski.

It was a real surprise when acclaimed director Gore Verbinski announced his next project to be an animated feature. He had never done animated movies before and besides that, he worked with a company that also hadn't made a full length computer animated movie before. It seemed like this movie was a real dream project for Verbinski and with his influence and reputation which he had build up with his movies over the years, he persuaded the studios to give him the budget and creative freedom.

And because the movie got done by a director of 'normal' movies why "Rango" is different and original. It isn't as fluffy as lets say a Pixar movie and it certainly isn't as clean and smooth. "Rango" is raw and prefers making its characters look dirty and ugly. A true western in that sense and by saying things look dirty and ugly I of course don't mean to say that the animation is bad. On the contrary really!

The animations are done by well known and acclaimed special effects company Industrial Light & Magic, or simply ILM. Ever since their early days they have been the pioneers of special effects and even till this date they are still at the top of their game. Yes, still better than Weta or any other special effects company, in my opinion. They had of course worked with all of the techniques before but this was the very first time for them to create a full length animated feature. All I can say is; I hope it won't be their last! Everything is incredible looking. The backgrounds, the details, the characters, the action. It makes you wonder were it all will lead up to one day. Is it really possible that in a decade or so we get to see movies, or at least CG sequences, that can't be distinguished from real ones? Leave it up to ILM to pull that off some day! Animation-wise I even prefer this movie over a Pixar one, though perhaps you shouldn't compare the two, since they serve a totally different audience.

Fore "Rango" isn't necessarily a kid's movie. You could still really call it a family movie but it are probably the adults who will be mostly able to appreciate "Rango" for its visuals, humor, characters and references.

What I really liked about this movie is that it features plenty of references to other movies, in- and outside of the western genre but it aren't the usual, standard visual gags or dialogs you would expect. It's way more clever and creative with those moments and as a movie lover I was really able to appreciate that, though I'm sure I haven't even catch all of the references yet with my first viewing.

It's a true western and not only just that; it's also one of the best western to have come out in the last couple of years! Not bad for a movie starring a chameleon! It really has a western look and feel to it, as well as a great sense of adventure. It's a movie I really didn't want to end.

The story is actually quite simple and also quite formulaic, once you start thinking about it. There actually really isn't anything special or original about the story but it's simply done all so superbly that the movie still works out as great and perfectly entertaining. The movie can even be divided into many different parts. It starts out as a sort of goofy one, which children will like but after that the comedy gets soon replaced with action and adventure and the comedy gets pushed more to the background. It doesn't make this the most consistent movie perhaps but while watching it you don't even notice it, so it just can't be a complaint in this case. The movie simply works out very well and you get sucked in immediately by all of it and the strange world of talking animals, who dress like humans and live in the human world. No, this really doesn't make sense but this really doesn't matter at all. You'll get especially sucked in by the movie its action sequences, which are all really amazing, as is Hans Zimmer's musical score, which suits the movie so very well and it should really earn him his second Oscar out of his career!

It's a movie with plenty of big names attached to it with its voice cast but most of them are actually quite unrecognizable. Even Johnny Depp's voice, who plays the main lead, isn't always that recognizable. This is really not a complaint though. Most of the time, big names seem only to be attached to these sort of animated movie so that they have a big name, which they can put on the the posters and advertise their movie with. But with this movie the people really seem to have been cast because of their skills and how well they fit their characters. It really lets the actors work for their money, so to speak and they are really acting and playing a character, instead of just voicing an animated character.

And the movie does has some real great characters in it, who are all also great looking ones, with each a very strong and distinctive, unusual look.

This is such a fun and just brilliantly put together movie. It will be hard for any movie this year to top this one! The movie even features a great montage and fart joke in it. Two things lot's of other movies can't ever seem to get right! 9/10!!!