Just extraordinary!

Rating: 10/10 (4 March 2011)

Rango has pleased me in such a way that I am unsure any other movie ever has and I was just raving to myself about it from the beginning, so I just HAD to share! This movie was a beautifully inclusive of things I didn't even know I appreciated in a movie because I had simply never seen such care put into its production. I am so relieved that there are still people who are dedicated to making the best movie they possibly can and I dare to hope that Rango sets the bar for the movies to follow in 2011. Right away I noticed the immense detail in the animation and the focus on simple, graceful images, qualities that did not disappear as the movie progressed. The plot and the protagonist's journey are both traditional and yet unique and fresh, thanks to the not-so-cliché detailed additions and unexpected perspective. The imagery is simply phenomenal and so gracefully blunt. I would not really consider this a children's movie because there isn't any dancing around the frightening or violent, it is all very inclusive. Another thing that surprised me was the overall wordiness and the style of humor. Some of the jokes I didn't get immediately, so I definitely liked the intellectual humor there. Once again, I don't really think that children are a fitting audience for such humor and there were definitely bewildered children in the theatre wondering why all the adults were laughing. I like that the story seems very folk-y when viewed out-of-context, but is brought into perspective very well. The characters were all very individual and dimensional. One thing that was refreshing was the variety in settings and genre. We go from Rango's little 'theatre' and his artsy dramatics to a Tex-Mex kind of environment where we are occasionally and subtly reminded that this is a role of Rango's and that we are in the modern era. I thought that Rango's graceful success and general boldness upon first arriving in Dirt were off-beat and quite pleasingly surprising. The music also fit very well with the film but wasn't simply background music, so I was surprised again that the movie makers would bother so much. There were a lot of subtle techniques used, and maybe it's just my own artistic eye, but these (things like Rattlesnake Jake nearly never being shown fully in frame, which makes him seem very large and thus quite frightening) show me that this was a film crafted with the utmost care. I can't find anything bad to say about this film, which proves to me that the people responsible for this went above and beyond, trying to make each aspect of the film a masterpiece in itself for an overall very consistently lovely movie. I would definitely recommend that everyone see it.