Watching the Rango Blu-ray’s excellent making-of featurette, it’s easy to see this is a film made by people who love movies, for people who love movies. From director Gore Verbinski (the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies) to his animators, writers and outstanding voice cast, everyone clearly had a great time working on the film. Rango is the first animated film from both Verbinski and the legendary George Lucas-founded Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) visual effects company, so the film was also largely an experiment.
The result is one of the most richly detailed and textured animated films ever made, centering on a surprisingly complex hero enthusiastically voiced by Johnny Depp. It should satisfy the kid in every adult, if perhaps not the kids themselves. Rango, a domesticated Chameleon, naturally has some identity issues. When he falls out of his owner’s car, he asserts himself as the last hope for Dirt, a small town of desert creatures with a serious water problem.
Ned Beatty channels John Huston in Chinatown as Dirt’s politically corrupt mayor in a half shell, while the film also takes cues from classic westerns and incorporates John Ford-worthy landscape shots. Rango is a funny, exciting, and gorgeous film that manages to pay homage without making a mockery of the films it’s homaging.
Rango was not made using motion capture. Instead, the actors performed the scenes with one another in a studio, giving the animators a reference for their facial expressions and how they would interact with the other characters. We’re given a glimpse at this process, which Johnny Depp refers to as “emotion capture,” in the aforementioned making-of documentary. That’s the real star of the supplements.
Paramount also throws in a fun “Crocodile Hunter”-esque look at the real animals that inspired the characters from Rango, an interactive tour through the many eccentric characters and locales of Dirt and a slew of deleted scenes, most of which can be seen as part of the “Extended Version” of the film. You can also watch the film with storyboard comparisons in a PIP window or with a semi-interesting commentary track featuring Verbinski and several members of his writing and effects teams.
This disc has instantly become one of the best-looking Blu-rays in my collection. The film is bright, colorful and bursting with detail, from each individual scale on the menacing Rattlesnake Jake to the grains of sand blowing across the desert landscape.
There has been plenty of discussion on this site regarding the film’s appeal and appropriateness for kids, and those questions are certainly valid. Younger viewers might have trouble identifying with Rango’s existential crisis or find themselves confused by the main external conflict of political corruption. The film is also very talky, which might test the patience of some youngsters. There are also a few instances of foul language and some adult-minded jokes that will go right over their heads, such as when Rango refers to his mother’s “active social life.”
It’s important to remember that “animation” is not a genre — it’s simply a method for telling a story. Rango is a western by genre, and a darned fine one at that. But we wouldn’t assume it safe to show our children 3:10 to Yuma or True Grit now, would we?
That said, I can only review the film as myself. And as a 24-year-old male, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don’t mean that merely in an “it’s fun for a kids’ movie” or “it’s a solid animated movie” sort of way. It’s a great movie. Period. I have no problem recommending it to any adult as just that.
