A mature, beautifully made gem of a film!

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2015)

Rango
Gore Verbinski's Rango is a wonder amongst animated films. Naturally, the colourful, larger than life medium lends itself to the eyes, ears and hearts of children, which is the direction most of the, take. But Rango presents a mature, raunchy, surreal, absurd spectacle rife with a mischievous buzz, and peppered with laughs just bordering on the inappropriate for children, even though they'd go right over their heads anyway.this movie broke the record for how many times my jaw hit the floor seeing what they could do with the visuals. It's detailed, meticulous, gorgeously rendered and beautifully crafted. Johnny Depp gives wit, endearing naivety, and a sense of childlike wonder to his creation Rango, a little lizard in the big desert, violently thrown from a car wreck into the greatest adventure of his life, and the archetypal heroes journey. He wanders through the baking Mojave desert, into the town of Dirt, inhabited by sassy, lovable creatures modelled after all our favourite western characters. He blunders his way into becoming the sheriff, and leads the whole town on a quest to locate their most sought after resource: Aqua. Verbinski directs with a snappy, take no prisoners sense of humour, throwing joke after joke after one liner after tongue in cheek nod at us, until we feel so bombarded with fantastic imagery, brilliant voice acting and just plain fun, that we more than feel like we're getting our money's worth. Each animal is beautifully designed, from the evil Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy having a ball with a mini gun tail and Amber orange eyes), to Beans (a fellow lizard and love interest for our scaly hero), to the sleazy mayor (Ned Beatty, that old turtle), to a rampaging band of bank robbing moles led by a blind Harry Dean Stanton. The film is so full of detail, beauty and ambitious artistry that it has taken me at least 3 views to feel like I've noticed every character, every one line, very brilliant little touch. It's that good. Among the whacky antics there's a theme of owning up to ones identity, becoming responsible for people you save, and finishing the work or task you set out to do, lest you leave your legacy unwritten, and leave your Greek chorus (represented hilariously here by a trio of Mariachi Owls) with no end to their song. That kind of weight and thought put into an animated film gives me hope for the medium as something more than just whacky enjoyable children's fare, and even so I feel like like if more of the, had these kinds of themes, in them, our young ones may not necessarily understand the, but subconsciously benefit more off them, than off just the pyrotechnics and visual magic alone. A truly well made, shoot em up, dusty old American western animated classic.