Film Review | Rango

As someone who has yet to experience the joys of fatherhood, I find it extremely difficult to picture what, exactly, kids would enjoy. This is all the more surprising given that they are probably the most unambiguously marketed to audience out there: you’re supposed to know something is ‘for kids’ the second you look at it, be it book or toy.

Back in the glory days of Disney, any parent of a suitably moderate persuasion wouldn’t bat an eye at the thought of having their kid silenced and entertained by a film from Walt’s hallowed stable. But the coming of 3D also heralded in a more ironic approach to animation (for whatever reason… maybe kids stopped going and were replaced by teens?).

Read: Shrek and its many imitators, which strive to satisfy more than one target audience at once by slipping in wry, tongue-in-cheek innuendos for the adults and decorating their otherwise generic plots with a collage of film references for geeks of any age.
But just as the parents would snooze (or, more probably, wince) at the loud kiddie stuff, do the kids in turn shut off during the deliberately ‘clever’ bits, and does this ruin the film for them?

Judging by the box office success of the Shrek saga alone (and, really, the fact that it is a saga at all by virtue of its many unnecessary sequels), it appears that this is not the case at all.

But it still makes you think about just how far the kid-adult divide can be stretched and remoulded, and fantasise about a subgenre that effortlessly blends the two, that breaks the depressingly facile ‘a bit for the kiddies, a bit for us’ vibe.

Not much to ask, surely… but it’s still rare to find.

Which is why I value Rango so much. I will probably watch it again soon. I also think it deserves to snatch all the Oscars away from The King’s Speech… but I’ll rein in my lunatic passion for this lunatic little film in the interests of journalistic objectivity.
So freewheeling is Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, The Ring, The Weather Man)’s tribute to Westerns and psychedelia that its main character doesn’t even have a name till around 20 minutes in.

When we first meet our chameleon protagonist (voiced by Johnny Depp), he is rehearsing a play we can assume he’s written. He will play the title role, and his supporting cast includes a palm tree and a wind-up toy fish.

No, they don’t come to life to participate in the production. Instead, the chameleon who will later name himself Rango on a whim – the same quixotic whim that propels the entire film forward – is thrust into an adventure of self-discovery: a random string of slapstick incidents leads him to become the sheriff of Dirt, a town deprived of water… and firmly and deliberately existing as a collage of Old West towns from Hollywood’s golden age.

But Rango – ever the thespian – is only concerned with being the star of the show and, as the feisty female lizard Beans (Isla Fisher) smells corruption in the Mayor’s office, Rango will have no choice but to become a hero… or face the grisly consequences.
Alas, any kind of stripped-down synopsis would fall short of capturing the film’s vibrant, trippy spirit.

Not because it’s particularly complex, but because it builds itself on delightfully random incidents rather than instantly discernible plot arcs.

Rango is sent on his quest by an aging armadillo who, despite being sawed in half by oncoming traffic (voiced by Alfred Molina, he is aptly named Roadkill) still finds time to dispense wisdom and tell our hero about his own quest for the ‘Spirit of the West’.

The story is loosely bookended by an amusing band of Mariachi owls who act as narrators, which is necessary because Rango himself can’t be relied upon to make any ‘correct’ decisions – absolutely everything happens either by accident or through sheer stupidity.

George Lucas’s veteran special effects company Industrial Light and Magic were at the helm of the film, and it’s their first full-length feature. Perhaps their history brings in a more sensitive understanding of film lore to bear and, while Rango is animated in what has now become the generic 3D format, the atmosphere of creaky, dangerous Frontier towns is convincing enough to sustain the freewheeling barrage of surreal slapstick.

And that’s where the line between kid and adult is blurred for me: less the product of a hyperactive child, Rango more closely resembles a marijuana-fuelled free-association binge.

It’s fitting that Verbinski, a director who flitted around so much in his career without ever establishing any prevalent aesthetic, seems to have found a genuine voice in a feverish film about a chameleon searching for his place in the world.