Review: Rango

Paramount Pictures

Rango is a kids movie. I hate to say it; I was hoping for a crossover experience. But while the story makes an effort to appeal to adults, and has some references to classic films – in the case of Chinatown, it’s less a reference than blinking neon sign announcing “Check it out! We’re referencing Chinatown!!” – it mostly relies on Road Runner type humor to get the audience going. That works really well if you’re ten, but it’s less compelling if you no longer spend your Saturday mornings watching cartoons.

Rango, voiced by Johnny Depp, is a pet chameleon who is accidentally thrown out of the family car when the driver swerves to avoid a passing armadillo. He lands in a desolate stretch of desert, and the armadillo, a philosophical fellow, sends him off to a nearby town to find his destiny, and some water. (Yup, water; right away we’re getting that Chinatown feeling.) Along the way he meets up with Beans (Isla Fisher), a tough lizard woman with curls and a long blue prairie dress. Beans is trying to hold on to her Daddy’s ranch but it’s tough since the water supply dried up. She’s appropriately suspicious of Rango (she all but calls him a city slicker) but she gives him a lift into town, where he waltzes into the saloon and cons the locals into believing he’s a tough guy. They send him off to meet the mayor, who appoints him sheriff (not a plum job in this town, most of the sheriffs have short life expectancies) and then things start to get complicated, because the folks want their new sheriff to find out where the water’s gone, and Rango suspects the answer lies with the mayor.

All this leads to predictable silliness, posses and chases with lizard cowboys riding birds in and out of canyons (sometimes it’s as much Raiders of the Lost Ark as Destry Rides Again). But it’s mostly flash and superficial excitement, there are no moments where the story transcends its animated silliness to touch something real, in the way that Up and Toy Story did. Still, if you’re looking for a film to see with a bunch of elementary school kids, this will work. Playing everywhere, won the box office crown on a sluggish movie weekend. C