Like a good-looking Steve Buscemi, Johnny Depp has found a profitable niche being the weirdo character actor who actually gets the lead, so much so that when he tries to play normal, Angelina Jolie can’t even make people take notice. (Remember last year’s The Tourist? Didn’t think so.)
Teaming up again with Pirates director Verbinski, Depp’s title role in the animated western Rango adds yet another memorable oddball to his repertoire. Part southern-fried Hunter Thompson (who makes a cameo from the great beyond), part over-eager drama student, Rango starts his journey as a common pet chameleon, acting out heroic scenes with his terrarium toys in the bed of his owner’s pickup. When the truck swerves, Rango and his inanimate friends are tossed out into the Mojave, a lawless wasteland where water is king. Through a series of lucky misfortunes and harmless boasts of false heroics, Rango becomes the unwitting savior of a dried up town called Dirt.
Rango’s often hilarious attempts to ingratiate himself to the denizens of Dirt are grounded by their equally charming reactions. The townsfolk are voiced by a talented cast, backed up by a script credited to just a single author (John Logan) rather than a committee. And though Rango’s investigation into the town’s depleted water supply tightly toes the line between cliche and loving homage, the clever banter and lovable characters keep things interesting.
The film actually achieves something akin to depth as well. Rango’s new surroundings raise existential queries for the bug-eyed hero. When he’s not forming posses to hunt down bank robbers or being chased by firecracker-throwing moles riding on bats (pretty awesome), he is on a surreal vision quest of self-discovery. Along the way, he encounters the “Spirit of the West,” an Eastwood look-alike cleverly voiced by Deadwood and Justified tin-star Timothy Olyphant.
Due credit to the team at Industrial Light & Magic, who rendered their first feature-length animated movie beautifully, from the blazing desert sunsets, to scruffy, toothless Dirt-onians. With winking adult jokes and references to everything from Chinatown and Raising Arizona to countless classic westerns, Rango is as much for adults as it is for the little ones.
