The Worst Best Animated Feature Winner

Rating: 1/10 (9 February 2014)

That is, unless FROZEN wins it at the 86th Academy Awards.
I like Westerns and I like animated movies so I was really looking forward to seeing RANGO. It was pretty disappointing.
The first thing I have to talk about is the animation. Now, I liked the backgrounds and all but the characters (except for Rango and the owls) are just not pleasant to look at. Now I get why they did it. They wanted to make it look gritty like quite a few live-action Westerns. But why would they make them *that* grotesque? (I wish I could italicize here). They don't need to look pretty. They can look unkempt without being grotesque. I'm sorry but that was a big problem for me.
The story was kind of simplistic and clichéd too. It's been done quite a few times already. There's a guy who's new to a town. He defeats a villain and is called a hero. Then a more dangerous villain challenges him and he reveals to everyone that he isn't really much of a hero. Then...I won't spoil it but you know how it ends.
I think they were trying to parody Westerns rather than making a serious Western. I know it was mainly a comedy. But they could still been more original.
None of the jokes were that funny either. I have absolutely no problem with the fact that RANGO seemed to be made for older audiences. A lot of people complained that it wasn't for kids and all that. I didn't care. I really liked Ralph Bakshi's FRITZ THE CAT which was meant for older audiences than RANGO. I was hoping for a kind of adult animated movie, which would have been nice for a change. But all we get are references to prostate inspections and mammograms. There was no cleverness or anything.
There are quite a few references to films in the Western genre. There's even a Clint Eastwood parody. Once again, there wasn't much cleverness in these references.
I hope Industrial Light & Magic tries again, though. I do want to see some quality animated movies outside of Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar.