The Ballad of Rango

Rating: 10/10 (13 March 2011)

Rango, director Gore Verbinski's (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, The Weather Man) first foray into animation, is a mesmerizing display of both animation and storytelling. We follow a chameleon, voiced wonderfully by the talented Johnny Depp, whose life is turned upside down when he finds himself stranded in the desert. After an encounter with a hawk, our chameleon friend runs into another critter of the desert, a lizard named named Beans (Isla Fisher), who brings the chameleon into town.
In the town of Dirt we meet an array of strange looking characters, all of which seem to be confused and curious about this newcomer the chameleon. Now, our friend who remains nameless up until this point, is an actor by trade, though I guess you could call it desire, who is in search of finding his own identity. When approached with the question of who he really is, he quickly comes up with the back story for...Rango.
Rango quickly becomes the town's new hero/sheriff. His first task is to settle the unpleasantness surrounding the towns water supply, which dwindles day by day. With the help of Beans and some of the other locals, Rango gets a posse together to find the missing water. Should he fail, the future of Dirt looks mighty grim.
This movie had the potential to be a cheesy, kid-joke infused, chaotic romp and a poor excuse of a western. Yet just the opposite happened. The jokes are witty, it is very controlled, and it is an excellent western, certainly one of the best since the millennium. The very opening scene with the soon to be named Rango is so clever and unexpected that I thought Nickelodeon had never even screened the movie before being released. There are so many one liners and visuals that go completely, and I mean completely over the younger audience's still developing head. There are some laugh out loud moments for them, but I don't think they will really understand what is going on for most of the movie.
There are guns, explosions, and chases to keep them busy, not to mention a fair dose of falls, whacks, and kerplunks. The kids will be fine. It's the adults that really get to enjoy this movie. I would go so far as to say that adults should call a babysitter to forgo any questions their children might have like, "Why are you laughing?"
Depp's performance, and I do mean performance, is remarkable. My brother said that he didn't even think it was Johnny Depp. Depp, whose face and on screen persona is so hard to dismiss, is hidden well behind the uneven eyes of his reptilian persona. His talents along with the entire cast, whose voice acting turned into real acting behind the scenes (I strongly encourage you all to watch the featurettes online) turned out stellar performances similar to those from Wes Anderson's 2009 masterpiece Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Verbinski's animation team deserves a great deal of praise as well. The textures and attention to detail rivals that of Pixar, who invented the process of CG feature films. The landscapes, dreamscapes, and everything in between is second to none. The most important part of the animation and perhaps the whole movie is the work done on each individual face. Each character pops off the screen. Usually such craftsmanship is reserved for the main character, the villain, and a few secondary characters (i.e. Carl Frederickson, Russell, Dug, and Charles F. Muntz from Pixar's Up), but here each character, regardless how much screen time they are allowed, is given their own unique features. It's some of the best animation I have ever seen, and that is not an exaggeration.
This tightly woven animated movie is a sight to be seen. Need I forget to mention, you don't have to break the bank to see it in 3D. Would it have looked nice, maybe, but this is sure proof that 2D is alive and well in the land of animated films. Will it fluff up those box office numbers, no, but will it win over the hearts of millions like me, starving for some real good animation outside of Disney and Pixar, you betcha.