Rango

Rango is a strange film, in that it's too smart to conceal how dumb it is. It's too real looking to allow for suspension of disbelief. It's deeply confused about what it is... which is kind of appropriate.

Rango is a chameleon with no name, a dreamer who has spent his entire life in a terrarium with only props for company. Yet somehow he manages to have masterful social skills that allow him to entrance everyone around him. He's a chameleon who doesn't know who he is, but we really only see him try to be one thing, and he's quite successful at it.

We have a mariachi band that acts as a chorus that exists both within the story and outside of it. We have almost frighteningly realized animals, but our female lead is a lizard with long flowing locks and bizarrely brown and white eyes. The world building clearly indicates that this is a world of humans, but most of the accoutrements of the cast are just little versions of human clothing and tools... but every now and then we see something human sized that has been discarded and reinvented. Rattlesnakes are enormous, but Gila monsters are about the size of groundhogs. Also, there are squirrels in the desert. Oh, and armadillos can apparently have their internal organs squashed to paper thinness without any ill effects.

Now, some of these wouldn't bother me if they weren't so beautifully and realistically rendered. The fact that the characters have reached the uncanny valley with their textures, their fur and scales, and their dirt... it makes it extremely jarring when we are thrust into Looney Tunes territory. Give me a cartoon world and cartoon rules and I forgive a lot, but Rango is *too* well done, and utterly and completely uncertain about its own internal rules and logic.

Then there are times when logic just flies out the window. A family of Appalachian groundhogs apparently needs to sneak and scheme and steal and avoid capture by the townsfolk of Dirt, who seem to number about thirty souls total. But the family seems to have fifty to sixty members... who have tamed bats... and have machine guns. Also, the bats blow up if they crash into things.

Now, sure, many things in this film are homages of other classic westerns and war movies and ... well... anything that the director and writers grew up with... but that doesn't mean you're excused from it making sense. If this was Yakko, Wakko, and Dot; then sure. Go for it. Be as random and insane as hell. But that isn't the game that we're playing here.

Also, the bit with the bullet at the end is so stupid that it's insulting. It's just ... I can't even think about it.

Now, you may say, "Hey, it's a kid's movie. Lighten up." No. Sorry. But the second that you have a character with an arrow going in one eye and out its jaw, you've left kiddie territory. The film is too slow paced and occasionally horrifying for a kid's movie, and too insulting of intelligence to be an animated film for adults.

I was looking forward to Rango. I had heard good things about it, and it looked gorgeous. In the end, I found myself just wanting it to be over.