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Rango

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Rango (2011)

March. 03,2011
|
7.3
|
PG
| Adventure Animation Comedy Western
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When Rango, a lost family pet, accidentally winds up in the gritty, gun-slinging town of Dirt, the less-than-courageous lizard suddenly finds he stands out. Welcomed as the last hope the town has been waiting for, new Sheriff Rango is forced to play his new role to the hilt.

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Steineded
2011/03/03

How sad is this?

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Crwthod
2011/03/04

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

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Tymon Sutton
2011/03/05

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

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Jerrie
2011/03/06

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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skyfall-33402
2011/03/07

A few things here... no one said it was a kids movie, even though I'm 13 and love old western movie series like Once Upon a Time in the West or Butch Cassidy. I do not remember much about this movie since I saw it years ago, but I got so annoyed at people rating it 1s.

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Jackson Booth-Millard
2011/03/08

I had seen many images and maybe a couple of clips of this computer- animated movie, and I knew the leading actor voicing, as for anything about it, I just waited until I watched it, directed by Gore Verbinski (Mousehunt, The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, The Lone Ranger). Basically a pet chameleon (Johnny Depp) is stranded in the Mojave Desert, on the road he meets armadillo Roadkill (Alfred Molina), who directs him to a town called Dirt. The chameleon narrowly avoids being eaten by a vicious red-tailed hawk before meeting desert iguana and rancher's daughter Beans (Isla Fisher), who takes him to Dirt, an Old West town populated by desert animals, the chameleon uses bravado and improvisation to fit in, presenting himself as a tough drifter, giving himself the name Rango. He quickly has a collision with outlaw Gila monster Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), but avoids a shootout when the hawk returns, Rango is chased by the hawk, but accidentally shoots and knocks down an empty water tower, which crushes the bird, the elderly tortoise Mayor (Ned Beatty) appoints Rango the new sheriff, but with the hawk dead, the townspeople worry gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), who feared the bird, will return. Dirt's water reserves, stored in the town bank inside a water cooler bottle, is nearly empty, sceptical Beans tells Rango he should investigate where the water has disappeared to. However, in the night, Rango inadvertently assists a trio of bank robbers, led by mole Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton), mistaking them for prospectors, when the townsfolk discover the water bottle has been stolen Rango organises a posse. Bank manager Merrimack (Stephen Root) is discovered dead in the desert, he was somehow drowned, despite the town's lack of water, the posse and the robbers then fight over the stolen water in a canyon chase, after which the robbers profess they found the bottle empty, but they are brought for trial. The mayor is buying land around Dirt, he denies any wrongdoing and tells Rango he is building a modern city, but the mayor hires Rattlesnake Jake to run Rango out of town, and make him admit everything he told the town about himself is a lie. Rango leaves ashamed and confused about his identity, but in the middle of nowhere he meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant), the Man With No Name, who Roadkill told him about, the Spirit inspires Rango to return to town and put things right. Rango learns that Dirt's water supply, located outside of Las Vegas, is controlled by an emergency shut-off valve in a water pipeline, the mayor has manipulated to cause drought and buy the land, Rango recruits the robbers to help him restore order to Dirt. Rango makes a diversion by calling out Jake for a duel, while the clan can turn the pipeline valve and flood the town with water, Rango eventually gets one over on the Mayor and his men and washing them away, in the end the Dirt citizens celebrate the return of the water and recognise Rango as their hero. Also starring Abigail Breslin as Priscilla, Ian Abercrombie as Ambrose and Gil Birmingham as Wounded Bird. A chameleon with a big imagination but a self- questioning personality in the wild west during the modern day, it is fairly simple if a little weird, but the voices are chosen well, the jokes including spoofs of Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood, Apocalypse Now, Star Wars and others are funny enough, and the animation to create the walking talking animals and the world they inhabit is fantastic, it may have clichés, but overall it is a fun animated action comedy western. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film of the Year, it won the BAFTA for Best Animated Film, and it was nominated the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film. Good!

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joeravioli
2011/03/09

Rango's animation is outright disgusting. Lizards, singing owls, ugly plastic fish, roadkill, rattlesnakes with machine-guns for rattles, rats, weird blobby creatures, and a homeless man compose most of the characters in this film, mashed together in a weird, reptilian Western about a chameleon in an identity crisis.The film begins with the titular character, a blue-skinned, crooked- necked chameleon, contemplating his dramatic life with his "friends" (the torso of a mannequin, a plastic tree, a dead cockroach, and a wind-up fish). However, a bump in the road sends his aquarium flying out of the back of the car he is in, thrusting him suddenly and unexpectedly into a harsh, unforgiving desert.The film continues from there, meandering around peril, comedic coincidence, and strange hints at an underlying message. It is witty, funny, and action packed, while the slightly crude humour adds a much needed dose of edginess to the genre of "children's films". And then, just when I thought the film was about to segue dolefully into a cliché-ridden redemption fueled finale, it blew my mind with one line:"Who am I?"A moving pause."I'm nobody."It was at this moment that I realized that this film is conveying a message, more powerful, more intellectually stimulating than most children's films would ever dare, presenting itself as the spiritual self-discovery of a chameleon. It is truly beautiful, despite the strange presentation, and vile animation.Good children's films these days often focus on the main character's interaction with others. While they often address the personal impacts of certain relationships, they rarely delve into the nature of the individual in and of itself. However, Rango is all about the individual learning to find his place in the world, learning to cope with his own existence. He discovers that his surroundings define who he is and that his choices are based on the duties that he has towards others. He, as the Spirit of the West says, "cannot walk out on his own story". Children, as well as adults, need this theme. So much of today's culture is fraught with indecision over one's identity. This film teaches us that we, as individuals, are defined by our circumstance. While our choices do play a significant role, we have a moral duty to be the people we were meant to be, in order to acknowledge our existence as...well, reptiles.Beautiful movie, one of the best animated films cinema has to offer.

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Semisonic
2011/03/10

When we hear about a Gore Verbinski/Johnny Depp tandem, we all know what movie franchise comes to mind first. Pirates of the Caribbean is a huge defining point for both the director and the actor, since the former will hardly ever beat the overall success of it with any other movie, and for the latter his character of Captain Jack Sparrow was, is and probably will stay the most recognizable image he ever brought to life. It's hard to get away from your fame, and it's probably the case when it becomes your curse - just like the Black Pearl's crew was cursed for being too successful at plundering.At first glance, it's hard to imagine anything more opposite to Pirates of the Caribbean than Rango. And not only because it's an animation. Rango is a story of a pet chameleon who's deeply in the hell of a self-identification crisis, and Captain Jack Sparrow would be the last person in the world to question himself who he is. Yet there's a strong vibe of the whole PotC trilogy (to me it IS a trilogy) coming from Rango. The Curse of the Black Pearl was all adventures, Dead Man's Chest was all goofy and slapstick, and At World's End was a rather surreal journey to the other side. And Rango has it all.But in this attempt to transmit the already well-mastered recipe for success from one franchise to another Gore Verbinski chose the second installment of PotC as the base tone. Which is weird, because, apart from being a huge commercial hit, Dead Man's Chest was a rather flat and over-the-top action adventure which, as most second episodes of trilogies do, simply served as a link towards the climactic third act. And while Rango was showing some promise to become a parable of the social inequality, a satire about brainwashing, vice and exploitation, and finally a story of a person on his self-exploring journey, it's still mostly a situation comedy where a striving for local punchlines outweighs a global dramatic effect. Jump funny, say fancy words very fast and make weird noises - and you're good to go. Yee-haw!I guess it's actually enough for the audience that simply wants to be entertained. After all, Rango is beautifully animated, and it definitely delivers a feast for your senses. But for those who prefer to go deeper, Rango could be a much more fulfilling, albeit not so happy, tribute to Johnny Depp's own thespian journey. Rango is a chameleon, an ever-mimicking creature, who has to play a character he invented himself - because he has no idea who he actually is as a person. Just like Johnny Depp himself, who had enacted so many personas during his actor's career that to most people he's just Jack Sparrow or even "that guy from that movie". It may be a hymn to the whole tribe of actors, but Johnny Depp is probably the most prominent example of a person who's been in so many pairs of shoes throughout his whole life that it's getting difficult to remember which one is actually yours.The ending, when our hero rides into sunset to solidify himself as an icon to be remembered, is a sort of a silent resignation to this fate. After all, what's the point in trying to define and defend your personal individuality if everyone else will still have his own image of you that's only vaguely related to the reality. Apparently, this choice goes beyond a single film, because in the next work of the aforementioned tandem, The Lone Ranger, Johnny Depp's character is all but a legend alive, with hardly anything truly human in it. Depp may be a most perfect hanger for film personas, but they do start to feel somewhat empty inside. Just like this film itself. But if you're not looking for more than what meets the eye, you'll be thoroughly entertained, because, even though the make-up may be flaking, the smile still stays on. Show must go on, and it will go on. Amen.

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