Smart Satire

Rating: Null/10 (16 March 2011)

"Stay in school, eat your veggies, and burn all the books that ain't Shakespeare." Rango
So this is where smart satire is hiding: in a low-key animation released at the worst time of year for movies (between January and May). It's Rango, with the gifted voice of Johnny Depp in the titular role and veterans such as Ned Beatty voicing the villain.
The inspiration for this witty oater is the water plot of Chinatown buttressed by such chestnuts as High Noon and spaghetti Westerns, most notably the ones with the Man with No Name. Depp's Jake is a hapless drifter whom fate sends to a very dry Western town, Dirt, to help the people find water that has mysteriously vanished. Be it Los Angeles or Dirt, it's probable that a no-good businessman like Noah Cross in Chinatown (John Huston) or in this case, the mayor (Ned Beatty) has taken it for himself to get deeds to land that people will eventually give up for lack of water.
The allusions and dialogue from those westerns and Chinatown come faster than even the best film geek could digest in one sitting. Adding the Apocalypse Now Valkyries scene gives richness outside the Western motif. The faces of the various animals, a chameleon for Rango (Depp), turtle for mayor, and snake for town tough guy, Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), are just a few of the many richly detailed characters. In a way, the Pixar influence is all over the film with the attention to individual characters and plot points that reveal those characters rather than serve ingenious animations.
My favorite is the Eastwood homage in the No Name role, a laconic, weathered old guy riding a golf cart, not a horse. At the point that Rango sees a city over the hill, as in the Cliff Robertson Twilight Zone story of the wagon train seeing a gas station, director Gore Verbinski and crew have fused more than one great film to a great TV series, and the irreverent reverence is complete.
Take the whole family to this fun movie. It's the old-timers like me, though, who grew up on Westerns, who are going to smile the most.