Rango: A Zany, Visionary Animated Western

One of the most satisfying things a movie can do is assemble a talented group of storytellers to tell a familiar story in a way it's never been told before. The western is a well-worn genre founded on legends about a very real time in America's history, and I think much of its enduring appeal is due to an effective blurring of the line between reality and myth, this keen understanding that with a myth comes a level of flexibility. And let me tell you that Rango isn't afraid to contort in the least. It's a visionary and even daring interpretation of the familiar western, one that trades legends for lizards and horses for roadrunners, mixing an age-old and ever-so-familiar story about love and identity in the Old West with a heavy dose of almost-eerily surreal animation, the type that you'll likely mix up with that bizarre dream you remember bits and pieces of sometime in the future.

I'll give it to you straight: Rango is a weird movie about a weird lizard who wanders into a weird western town full of weird talking animals. Yet, it wholeheartedly embraces its inherently unnatural concept, and I was drawn to how fully it recognized, grasped, and accepted its eccentricity in every way, down to its visuals. An animation style that leans heavily on performance-capture is a wildly uncanny and even mildly creepy spectacle, and I'm at a loss as to a reasonable comparison. The story of Rango is a conversely familiar interpretation of the classic western, one nevertheless characterized by a ludicrous and lush creativity that draws an absurd number of interconnections between the Wild West and the animal kingdom. Its cinematic literacy is likewise incredible, its knowledge of the history of the Western unparalleled by any other reimagining of the genre I've ever come across. It's a wildly fun ride, a smart and thorough one at that.

However, this rodeo isn't entirely without some underperforming riders, as some of Rango is too uncomplicated for its own good. Its story doesn't pick up a meaningful-enough head of steam toward anywhere important, and can sometimes feel as if it's stuck in a rut of immobility. Still, it never loses its weird and wacky charm despite an occasionally loose narrative, and through thick and thin, Rango is never uninteresting. It's populated by dynamic, three-dimensional characters that give its dusty plains undeniable life, characters that are incredibly well-realized and voice-acted, characters that carry it to the finish with a triumphant yee-haw! and a massive cloud of dust. The story of Rango himself is incredibly well-defined, a surprisingly muscular zero-to-hero tale, and he's supported substantially by this wonderful and colorful cast, with the potentially romantically interested desert iguana named Beans being a no-nonsense and semi-epileptic standout. Just watch the movie because I'm not going to explain this one. Rango is completely different from any other animated movie I've ever seen, while also being comfortably graspable and even effortlessly relatable all at once.

Rango may have benefited from one or two additional rewrites to beef up a relatively empty middle third, but it has no shortage of character, effortlessly riffing on the staples and stereotypes of the Old West in a way that somehow makes its compelling assortment of talking animals appear all the more vibrantly drawn. It's an animated movie that has been unfairly lost to the sands of time, and otherwise an unbelievably intriguing, inconceivably creative, and unabashedly uncanny world populated by a colorful and complete cast of campy yet creative characters that are sure to delight.

If Unforgiven is a portrait, then Rango is its Picasso.

Rango - 8/10

Galatians 1:10