Corpus

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2011)

It is possible to decorate something ugly with beauty. It will still be essentially ugly, but have some attraction. Likewise, it is possible to have an ordinary movie, borrowing from others in an ordinary way, but to have some clever elaborative filmmaking.
Verbinski is something of a genius at this. His charter was to make a safe cartoon, and that means you assemble from known parts. Nowhere is this more routine than in the western. So what does he do? He borrows in the open, making each one a small insider joke. There are a spectrum of these, some overt, others subtle so players at any level can enjoy.
So he has to start with the notion that this thing is fractionally folded, in other words it has story bits lent from all over. This notion is conveyed by a frantic, schizophrenic introductory performance. Our main character is a chameleon, wink, wink. Even this is modeled after Robin Williams' intro from 'Aladdin.' Once the story proper begins, we have a sequence of references to prior Depp films, including one never finished ('Don Quixote'), one where the writer is the subject ('Fear and Loathing') and even his obscure Kustarica film.
Having set this deeply self-referential tone, it is safe to drag in the workhorse elements of other films, tacked onto the 'Chinatown' storyline.
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.