Rango

IMDB
First time viewed: Yes
Current Release: Yes
Watched With: Alex, Kyla

This movie is a bit of a miracle. Gore Verbinski once again proves it doesn't matter what genre you throw at him, he can do it just as well as the best. I don't think you would ever pick that Mousehunt, The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Weather Man were made by the same person. Well now he can add Rango to the list.

So what happens when you get the best special effects company in the world to work for themselves? You get the most incredibly detailed and realistic looking film ever called a kids animation. It is gobsmackingly gorgeous. The legendary creature designer Crash McCreery now get's to outfit an entire cast, an entire world. God bless him, who else could come up with a french fox that wears her own tail around her neck? Genius. Every character is stunningly detailed and unique. I see Roger Deakins is once again on hand to advise in the cinematography. Gore Verbinski's past as a compositor and of course the expert team at ILM pull it all together to make all the lighting, lens distortions, focusing, everything look like a real film. If it weren't for the outlandish characters you could mistake it for one. Of course the special effects department are top notch too, there are some amazing dynamic sand and water effects, even a beautifully faked timelapse sequence. The character animation itself is just as detailed. I shudder to think of the amount of rigging involved in some of these guys.

ENOUGH TECH TALK! Only I care about that, how was the actual movie?????

Deliriously insane, hilarious and a real old-school western to boot. This is the kind of movie you can only make if you don't have a studio breathing down your back, half the film would never have made it through the first round of studio notes. Filming the actors all together to record the voices is a HUGE benefit in the way the humour works here. The lines are so bizarre but it's the timing and delivery that make them work. The actors are all great too and you can even see some of their mannerisms find there way into the animation.

There is a bit of a lull in the end of the 2nd act but it is so interesting to look at the visuals I didn't care. Perhaps it feels slow because it is bookended by two awesome action sequences. Gore Verbinski may be my hero for crafting action set pieces. It's not quite the dizziying heights of the mindboggilignly awesome climactic 40 minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest but I don't think anything in the history of cinema has ever been as good as that. Still it has some of that manic flavour and still manages to juggle action between multiple characters like a well choreographed dance.

The opening sections of the film are my favourite parts though, especially the little self referential opening monologue and a wonderful nod to Hunter S. Thomson.

The film is PG, there are some rather violent and scary characters. There's not a joke every 5 seconds, they actually take time with character and story, which is unusual for a kids film, but needed in a western, which is what this resembles most in structure and story.

I can't wait to watch this again immediately and I hope people throw money at ILM to make more animated features. Well, just as long as they have a great script and director like Verbinski.