I wondered how Rango would fare with contemporary audiences who have relatively little familiarity with Westerns (I also wondered about this in reference to True Grit, and while its performance on Oscar night wasn’t great, the box-office results should make the Coen Brothers happy): would they “get” it? Would the tropes still resonate? Apparently so, or perhaps a good film is a good film, and supersedes any question of genre.
I enjoyed Rango partly because I could place it in context. I spotted the Chinatown allusions (which are clear and unequivocal). I suspected a nod to McCabe and Mrs. Miller: compare the effect of the rumour linking Rango with the death of the seven Jenkins brothers with McCabe’s identification as the man who allegedly killed Bill Roundtree, both instances where a (false) reputation gives the hero instant gravitas in the eyes of the townspeople (represented by a bunch of seedy barflies in each movie, but still…admiration is admiration). Furthermore, we get a cameo by quintessential spaghetti Western icon The Man With No Name (here called “The Spirit of the West,” who looks and talks like Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s trilogy). Rango himself (his physical mannerisms, personality, and Depp’s vocal performance) is just shy of an outright Don Knotts impression (one might remember Knotts’ appearance in the animated The Incredible Mr. Limpet and his starring role in the Western spoof The Shakiest Gun in the West, but Rango is also a close cousin of television’s Barney Fife in voice, attitude, and manner).
There is even a delightful dialogue exchange between the Spirit of the West and Rango which probably went over the heads of any audience member under 50 years of age:
Rango: “Is this Heaven?”
Spirit: “If it were, we’d be eating Pop-Tarts with Kim Novak.”
[Kim Novak? Yeah, I remember and appreciate her and would eat Pop-Tarts with her any day, but…Kim Novak? Good one, John Logan (Rango’s screenwriter).]
But audiences too young to perceive any of those homages can still enjoy Rango for what it is, an exciting, amusing, well-animated and voice-acted, self-aware tale. It might be a teeny bit too long but it’s paced quite well overall (I can think of several sequences which could have been trimmed severely but nothing I’d wholly jettison) and (thank goodness) has no annoying musical numbers (there is a silly mariachi-band “Greek chorus” but they aren’t too intrusive). There is a bit of semi-serious philosophising and mysticism, but for the most part the proceedings unreel in a straight-faced, “realistic” (given the context) fashion (so much so that I was mildly irritated by the inclusion of a few anachronisms, such as the vending machine Rango hides in at one point—these smack a little too much of post-modern “wackiness” and seem out of place in the otherwise satisfactorily old-fashioned society of the town of Dirt). The plot is curiously convoluted (with the big “reveal” only half making sense), but that’s partly a result of its Chinatown roots, I suppose. Overall, I found it pleasantly entertaining, neither too sentimental nor too intentionally “hip.”
Chameleon Rango (well, he doesn’t get that name until later, but roll with me on this), is separated from his “home” (a terrarium in the back of a family car speeding through the desert), eventually winding up in the dusty (and how!) town of Dirt, home to a wide variety of anthropomorphic creatures embodying various Western-movie stereotypes. His natural flair for the dramatic embellishment of reality (i.e., he lies and exaggerates a lot) and the almost-accidental death of a predatory hawk at his hands earn him the post of sheriff. Dirt, however, is a dying town, due to a lack of water. What happened to the water? Why is the Mayor buying up everyone’s apparently-worthless land? Oh, you can probably figure it out, but it’s more fun to pretend you can’t, and just watch the movie.
It’s hard to discuss the “acting” in an animated film, since everything except the actual voice is man-made, but suffice it to say the characters in Rango are cleverly designed (I didn’t much care for Rattlesnake Jake, but we’ll let that one go), expressively animated, and pleasingly voiced. Johnny Depp, as noted above, stays just shy of actively imitating Don Knotts, instead making Rango an appealing wimp-turned-hero. Oddly enough, a fair number of the other voice actors in this example of the most “American” of genres are from the UK—Isla Fisher, Ray Winstone, Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina—but they’re all excellent “voicers” and the home-grown talent includes Ned Beatty (following up on his villainous turn in Toy Story 3), Stephen Root, Abigail Breslin, and Harry Dean Stanton.
Rango has done fairly well at the box-office in its first two weeks, although its enormous budget ($135 million?!) means it must have “legs” (and international box-office success) to earn a profit. Well, I was wrong about “traditional Western” True Grit’s lack of general audience appeal (although I might point out that while True Grit has so far earned $168 million in the USA, it cost “only” $38 million, and was nominated for a truckload of awards to boot, which didn’t hurt its chances to turn a tidy profit). Perhaps I have once again over-estimated the “danger” of making a film in a genre which is no longer popular or familiar to audiences (and paying homage to, or satirising such a genre is also risky). Or perhaps not…the “Western” aspects of Rango are not being emphasized in the trailers and advertising at all, a clever if misleading gambit—because, basically, Rango is a spoof of movie Westerns. That doesn’t mean audiences who don’t know Westerns won’t like Rango, but they may not fully appreciate it.
As for me, I liked it and appreciated it.
