Reaching For The Skies With Rango

Rango is a little bit like Inception in that it's a miracle it ever got made at a blockbuster level by a major studio. Both films are targeted at a wide commercial audience, have identifiable characters and are set in familiar genres (Inception is a heist movie, Rango is a western), but it's what's going on under the surface and how that's communicated that makes them riskier propositions. No matter how much either movie tries to entertain us they're both art house movies at the end of the day, and considering Rango is about a cute animated lizard voiced by megastar Johnny Depp aimed at Mom, Pop and the kiddies, it's staggering the studio green lit a such an unusual proposition. Perhaps they didn't realise what they'd be getting themselves into?

On the surface Rango is about a domesticated Chameleon who gets separated from his owners on a remote desert road. He eventually stumbles into the town of dirt where he unwittingly becomes their sheriff after defeating a local predator. Then the water starts to dry up...

However, what it's really about is a guy searching for his identity. Generally it explores how individuals define themselves by narratives whether it's the stories that we tell ourselves from our own imagination, stories that we allow other people to tell about us or stories that we see around us like movies. In fact Rango is very much a film about films. It's no coincidence that the film should use the western template as a vehicle for it's story as it's perhaps the most clearly defined of any movie genre. It uses the western iconography, like that of a mystic Clint Eastwood-like figure who embodies 'the spirit of the west' to communicate a basic, spiritual worldview to the title character. Rango references other movies like Chinatown and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, subtly deploys pieces of music used in other films (like the haunting Danny Elfman melody from The Kingdom)and in some surreal sequences almost addresses the audience directly.

The humour is distinctly odd, the language sophisticated and certainly not leveled at your typical suburban brat, the depiction of desert life frank and in-your-face and the story evenly paced and 'talky'. And that's all very, very good from an adults point of view but there's a risk you'll be alienating children (and dumb people) who aren't taken in by the daft talking animal routine.

If there's a chink in it's armour it's that Rango doesn't have the emotional resonance that a Pixar film might, but it more than makes up for it in it's depth, sharply timed, oddball jokes, photo real animation and epically staged action. Not everybody will understand all of Rango and not everybody will be entertained by all of it, but there's enough broadly appealing stuff to make this worth virtually everybodies time.