Hit that's amiss

Rating: 6/10 (9 March 2011)

I began to like the film right away. I was expecting to be delighted with all the amazing animation greatly enhanced by the stellar cast and a funny and heartwarming story. The opening scene with the adorable owls promised something good to come. I settled down in my seat and cracked open my large bag of Corn Nuts. The introduction of the title character, Rango the Camelion, followed suit. The poor little guy was suddenly ripped from his imaginary idyllic environment with the humans and thrust into the grave dangers of the real world. Then something happened. Thump. The film that had started out like Bullet Bob Hayes running a down and out then, unfortunately, slowed down like an old man out for a 50 foot jog in the park.
As the film meandered along it became increasingly hard for me to maintain interest. That surprised me coming as it did from the same people responsible for a number of great action films. Maybe story boarding may have helped. Maybe having a bit of assistance from someone – anyone – more experienced in creating animated films may have helped. Perhaps they felt Pete Docter was too pricey. Having no one was more costly yet.
Speaking as a trained artist, the animation itself is a masterpiece of the genre. At times, it's hard to believe some of the things you are seeing on screen are animation; it's that realistic. That was the best saving grace of the film, it gave me something of considerable interest to study during the too frequent sluggish stretches.
I expected some visually stunning characters coming from the genius of Industrial Light and Magic. I was to be disappointed. I got the feeling that no one was in charge of the store, so the employees were skateboarding down the aisles.
The "star" of the trailers and the film is a quirky chameleon. That would make one expect some similarly adorable co-stars. Not so much. Whoever was responsible for character design seems to have come from a dark place they shouldn't have left.
Virtually none of the films characters, except for perhaps the mariachi owl quartet, are what one could call endearing enough to make action figures from. I get the feeling the designers thought they were creating characters who would be offbeat in a quirky, oddly funny sort of way. Instead, they created an ensemble for a theater of the bizarre, unsightly bordering on the grotesque. A film peopled with a few such characters can be interesting for the counter-point they often times offer. But having all the characters like that is just uncomfortably unsightly. Compounding the felony, they chose for the film's setting one of the more unappealing areas of the world; the sparsest parts of the Southwestern American desert. I understand that they felt it gave some degree of credence to the single plot element. In retrospect, they may have been better served, and in so doing better serve the filmgoing public, by having a look at how-to-write-a-book-now.com and then develop a plot set in a more appealing area of the world.
Some of the character's disquieting appearance might have been counter-balanced by other endearing qualities but, alas, such was not to be.
Beyond their appearance, the Western accents the actors tried to emulate with most of the dialog fell short of actually being intelligible in places. One might tend to blame that sort of studied mumbling on the actors going a smidgen too far in trying to satirize those sorts of characters; but I'd lay the blame on the director's doorstep as it's his responsibility for that sort of thing appearing in the film. In any event, it fell flat. Perhaps it'd be better with subtitles.
The actors, without exception, turned in solid performances. Johnny Depp was in fine form as the title character's voice and complimented by Isla Fisher as the the strange lizard girl afflicted with petit mal seizures. Ned Beatty, Abigale Breslin, Timothy Olyphant, Alfred Molina and Harry Dean Stanton contribute their usual quality work. And, lets not forget Bill Nighy as the nasty snake. But for all their effort one cannot get past the meager material they're given to work with. Listening to them deliver the material is better than the overall film.
I had the nagging feeling that this film developed with a few well-meaning guys over a couple of beers who had worked together before and thought their little joke was hilarious and then muscled the funding for this as some sort of requite for previous successes. That thought congealed with recognition of scenes that appeared to have been designed for 3D. The fact that the film is not in 3D may be a tacit admission from the makers that they are aware they missed the mark with this one.
Lastly, there's a sparsity of elements to hold the attention of children; who are usually the target demographic for animated films. There were children in the theater and I could tell they weren't entertained by all the noise they were making.
By Bruce L. Jones
http://webpages.charter.net/bruce.jones1/