Mister Tee wrote:Though I'm not in Damien/dws territory, I think I'm starting to get tired of cartoons.
Surprisingly, of the four cartoons I saw last year--How to Train your Dragon, Toy Story 3, Megamind, Tangled--I really liked three of them. (All but Megamind.) The niece and nephew have turned me into a softer touch for animated movies. But cartoons I never liked, I hate even more after watching them with the niece and nephew. Monster's Inc. was one I merely disliked until a few viewings with the nephew turned it into one of my least favorite movies of the past ten years. I can't stand to be in the same room as Finding Nemo.
I'll never go out by myself and see an animated movie, but I can actually enjoy them if I end up watching them.
Though I'm not in Damien/dws territory, I think I'm starting to get tired of cartoons. I saw Rango a few weeks ago and have barely been able work up the energy to say anything about it. Part of my weariness was set in motion by the coming attractions, which consisted of Rio and Hop and what seemed half a dozen other cartoons coming our way in the next couple of months. Also, a week or so ago, I rented Tangled. This whole batch of films just feels like it's blending together into one big movie, with easily recognizable rhythms, similar characters and predictably happy endings.
This isn't to say I see no gradation among the various offerings. Rango is probably something of a cut above the rest. It's got that acid-trip opening, an unusual look, and some fairly clever details. But it's also got the bickering-eventually-swooning love interest, the dastardly villains, the roaming-the-landscape plot structure, the largely victorious finale. For all the film's virtues -- and this probably scores high enough to even win next year's animated feature prize -- I found myself vaguely bored by the whole enterprise.
I'm certainly still capable of being roused by something truly inventive in the genre. Wall E and Fantastic Mr. Fox are, I think, among the best films of recent vintage. It's the mid-range efforts for which I'm starting to lose my taste; I may start passing on more of them.
Since I requested it, here are the trade reviews, Variety first. Your local paper presumably reviewed it today as well. I'd be very surprised if this weren't a substantial hit, and an early candidate for an animated feature nomination.
Rango
Gore Verbinski's astonishingly adult-skewing animated debut is a comedic riff on the Wild West formula.
By Peter Debruge
Johnny Depp voices the lead character in director Gore Verbinski's animated debut 'Rango.'
Johnny Depp isn't the sort of star to blend in, so it's saying something that his turn as the world's most conspicuous chameleon in "Rango" is so full-bodied, you forget the actor and focus on the character. Depp is but one voice in the all-around impressive ensemble Gore Verbinski assembles for his astonishingly adult-skewing animated debut, a comedic riff on the classic Wild West formula that could, if viewed in the right light, just as easily serve as one long "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"-style hallucination. With kid appeal aplenty, the eccentric yet aud-friendly result should rustle big business worldwide.
This stunning virgin foray into feature-length animation from Verbinski and the vfx miracle workers at Industrial Light & Magic (his primary collaborator on the "Pirates of the Caribbean" pics) looks and feels nothing like the toons that have come before. "Rango" boasts not only the most photoreal visuals this side of "Wall-E" but a refreshingly unique narrative sensibility to boot, starting with its Charlie Kaufman-worthy opening monologue and Greek chorus -- technically, a mariachi band of bright-eyed Mexican owls whose songs fit the score's playful marriage of Hans Zimmer bombast and Los Lobos energy.
Depp plays a zonk-eyed pet lizard traveling cross-country through the Mojave Desert when a freak accident leaves him stranded in the blistering sun. Far removed from his natural habitat, the green-skinned, Hawaiian shirt-wearing reptile finds it virtually impossible to camouflage himself in his new all-brown environment, choosing instead to pass for something he's not, a fearless gunfighter named Rango.
With no real-world experience but a near-inexhaustible supply of good luck, Rango looks exactly like what the naively optimistic denizens of Dirt need right now: a hero. Their old-timey desert outpost is beset by predators and ruled by a corrupt mayor (Ned Beatty, playing a less huggable villain than he did in "Toy Story 3"), who clearly has a hand in the mysterious drought making all their lives miserable. That much even younger auds should be able to follow, though John Logan's hilarious script is loaded with two-dollar dialogue and wonderfully baroque expressions sure to confound even a fair number of adults.
Live-action helmers have had mixed success making the transition to animation of late, but Verbinski brings real vision to the endeavor, conceiving a world that starts small -- contained within Rango's terrarium, in fact -- and gradually expands to accommodate nearly all of Monument Valley in a way auds can intuitively follow. Even more impressive than the world itself is the incredibly varied ensemble that populates it, a motley mix of reptiles and rodents in which no two are redundant, each memorably designed by Mark "Crash" McCreery and his team, then brought to life via a bull's-eye match of critter and character actor. Though the entire cast is terrific, standouts include Bill Nighy as venomous Rattlesnake Jake, Ray Winstone's menacing gila-monster henchman Bad Bill and Isla Fisher as Rango's long-lashed love interest, Beans.
Where "Rango" ultimately falters is in the uncomfortable juxtaposition of kid-friendly entertainment -- represented by unnecessarily bombastic fight scenes that feel out of place within Logan's more intellectually spirited screenplay -- and the savvier, self-reflexive humor clearly aimed at adults. The only major pop-culture references here are a cameo by a Hunter S. Thompson lookalike and an amusing run-in with a mystic Man With No Name-esque figure (voiced by Timothy Olyphant). Though most of the laugh-out-loud moments result from either witty wordplay or inspired physical comedy, even the fart jokes feel fresh by contrast with the delivery we've come to expect from toondom's more established players.
It's hard to call originality "Rango's" greatest asset when the story itself trades so heavily on established Western movie tropes, but the project clearly comes from a completely different place than any other American-made animated feature. That radical departure is reinforced by the look of the film, which is now the third toon to rely on Roger Deakins as a virtual cinematography consultant.
Considering ILM's incredible background in live-action vfx, it's no surprise the company brings a staggering level of realism to the lighting and textures throughout. The shocker is just how good their character animation work is: From the way Rango walks to the subtlest eye twitch, this quirky chameleon's screen presence is more plausible than even some of Depp's most beloved flesh-and-blood creations, raising the bar for other studios going forward.
While on the subject of eyes, Rango's peepers violate the prevailing wisdom that bigger is better, with scaly lids covering all but a tiny pinhole at their center, inviting us to consider the performance of the character's entire face rather than just his shiny irises. It should also be said that even projected in 2D, "Rango" makes better use of dimension than many stereoscopic toons.
And Hollywood Reporter, with our old Variety pal.
Rango: Film Review
by Todd McCarthy
Bottom Line
Madly clever animated sagebrush saga has style and wit to burn.
Johnny Depp voices the title character in a clever, witty movie from his "Pirates of the Caribbean" director, Gore Verbinski, that employs a technique the filmmakers call "emotion capture."
The dusty cards of the Old West are reshuffled into a winning hand in Rango, a madly clever animated sagebrush saga with style and wit to burn. Reconfiguring the spaghetti Western into a fusilli con camaleonte, Gore Verbinski's surprising escape picture after years in the Caribbean is eye-poppingly visualized in a hyper-realistic style that at times borders on the surrealist. The verbal flights of fancy will often sail right over the heads of rugrats, as will the innumerable references to and twists on classic movies, making this one animated feature some adults might enjoy more than their kids. But the presence of Johnny Depp in the title role virtually assures muscular returns for this Paramount/Nickelodeon production.
Rango has the feel of a lark, of a film-lover's spree in a playpen equipped with some of the world's most expensive and expressive toys. Verbinski also enjoys the advantage of some highly gifted playmates, including technical wizards at Industrial Light + Magic (working on the firm's first animated feature), some of his Pirates effects cohorts and visual consultant Roger Deakins, who helps make the picture look as much shot as animated.
Unquestionably the first kids' toon to feature a homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas within the first 10 minutes, Rango pivots on the pilgrim's progress of a mild-mannered pet chameleon who finds greatness thrust upon him when he pretends to a past of accomplished gunslinging in the name of justice. In the process, he becomes sheriff of the dried-up desert town of Dirt, which is presided over by a fat, old tortoise who controls the ragged community's water supply, a situation that neatly allows the film to accommodate a child-friendly ecological theme while, for buffs, also summoning strong memories of Chinatown.
That Rango has something different in mind from the general run of animated features is clear in the preliminary philosophical banter between Rango (Depp), a bulging-eyed chameleon who's normally blue, and a Don Quixote-like armadillo (Alfred Molina) whose midsection has been flattened by a truck's wheel. The compositions, especially in this stretch, are imaginatively bizarre, as are Rango's free-associative musings, some of which go by so fast that it's hard to take them all in.
Ushered on his way through the arid landscapes by a mordant mariachi owl band, Rango encounters female lizard Beans (Isla Fisher), with whom he stumbles upon the aptly named town of Dirt, which is occupied by a wide range of vividly realized critters who share one thing in common: They're all thirsty and can't hold out much longer without water. The wheelchair-bound, seemingly genial old tortoise mayor, who is voiced by Ned Beatty and looks like him too, promises everyone that good times lie ahead and attempts to co-opt Rango, who furthers his invented legend by killing a giant, metal-beaked hawk, by appointing him sheriff.
While some distracting sideline villainy triggers some busy chases and battles, the real bad guy is the mayor, who has been hoarding water in preparation for the day when he will have bought up all the surrounding land for cheap. His henchman is the giant Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), memorably equipped with a rapid-fire Gatling gun where his rattle normally would be. But before Rango faces his high noon with the serpent, he has an inspiring encounter with an iconic character called the Spirit of the West who bears an uncanny resemblance to an aged Man With No Name.
When filmmakers who have never before worked in animation jump into the deep end, the result could range from the freshly innovative to the downright clueless. In this case, it's happily the former that prevails. Screenwriter John Logan, working from a story cooked up with Verbinski and the latter's longtime illustrator and conceptual consultant James Ward Byrkit, stirs the pot of genre archetypes, conventions and cliches with a sharp eye for their amusing reusability while also writing flavorsome character dialogue.
For his part, the director has broken with convention by recording the vocal performances, not separately in the isolation of studio booths but with the actors working together on a prop-laden and partly dressed stage for 23 days, during which time their work was shot by HD cameras so that animators could later reference their facial expressions and bodily gestures for inspiration. There is evidence of this working more with some actors -- particularly Depp and Beatty -- than others, but the verbal exchanges do spark and flow in the manner of accomplished ensemble work; in the promotional materials, the filmmakers call the technique "emotion capture," as opposed to motion capture.
But most exceptional is the visual style, which makes even the best animated 3D look like a poor cousin. More than in any other animated work that comes to mind, meticulous attention has been paid to light and shadow, to gradations of color, to details of faces, costumes and props and to the framing of shots. Some of this is deliberately meant to ape the density of the compositions in certain classic Westerns and, even more, to those of Italian master Sergio Leone. Beyond this, it's arresting to behold the twists the filmmakers add, such as creating a Monument Valley-like backdrop but deliberately changing its color from reddish to a sandy yellow or reducing the town in spots to what could be called its skeleton.
Such imaginative leaps are perpetuated by Hans Zimmer's score, which reworks the sound of Ennio Morricone's celebrated scores for Leone in ways that are exciting, sometimes comic but never silly.
A few off-color dialogue exchanges are mildly surprising for a family-friendly, PG-rated film, and dropping an additional five minutes or so would have tightened the screws to its benefit.
