Bottom line: is Rango any good?

Yes. It is very good. In fact, in addition to being a great animated movie, it is an absolutely fantastic Western.

By now, you have probably heard the plot is a re-telling of Chinatown, set in the Old West, right outside contemporary Las Vegas. How that works is a bit of a mystery, but it does indeed work. Filthy residents live in the squalid town of Dirt. Water, once plentiful, has dried up; only a benevolent mayor seems to hold the hope of the town alive. Into this town arrives a painfully lost chameleon—ironically so, as he is totally unable to blend in whatsoever. Due to a series of mishaps, the town residents come to see him as their salvation. And, against the cliché, the chameleon (who adopts the name Rango) isn’t as mishappy as he seems. He’s got a brain and (again symbolically) a quick tongue, and he is able to sum up the situation and uses them with a few acts of outright bravery. Yeah, he is a coward, but he’s a coward who gets things done. And one thing he gets done is discover the lack of water is a bit odd. In fact, he quickly and cooly begins to re-assess the mayor’s benevolence, and discovers…well, you can guess the rest.

A probable first from Nickelodeon Movies, the movie is a beautifully animated film, with rich, vibrant colors—and no, the film is not in 3D. This means that many kids will be seeing an animated film with the full splash of colors for the first time in many years. In addition to the stunning artwork and lavish desert scenery, the film is well directed. Scenes are shot through dangling glass bottles, hurtling through canyons, and through holes in roofs. A live-action Western has probably not been so interestingly staged.

The characters are outstanding. Rango is performed by Johnny Depp, who provides complex dialogue so fast and realistically that he sells every line. Isla Fisher turns in a superb performance as Beans, the savvy pioneer woman (she is really a lizard, but cut us some slack: she does have breasts; but you can overlook that because Rango, another reptile, has a navel) who begins to piece together the mystery for Rango. Ned Beatty is the mysterious mayor, and a totally unrecognizable Bill Nighy voices the hired gun of Rattlesnake Jake: a cool-as-they-come outlaw who actually terrified a couple of the younger kids for a second or two. A welcome return to one of the Czar’s favorite actors (who more or less vanished for the last 20 years) is Harry Dean Stanton, who voices a Hills-Have-Eyes-like clan leader, and is a mole that looks suspiciously like Harry Dean Stanton.

But hang on a bit: the townspeople are horrible. They are so carefully rendered that they practically smell bad. Ears are missing, eyes are bandaged, they limp, retch, and gag. Not a single one is cute, save perhaps the small possum Priscilla (Abigail Breslin) who is in the process of choosing between being sweet and being feral. And check out Wounded Bird, a giant crow that looks like a Crow indian (specifically, Will Sampson, and be sure to ask the Czar someday about him). The personifications of the various desert wildlife, and how carefully they were mapped to realistic human typology, is nothing short of ingenious.

Oh, and the music kicks ass, as Western thematic hooks are combined and muscled with great orchestral backing.

The movie is perhaps more layered than any animated movie; no, we don’t mean that there are kid jokes and grown-up jokes like Shrek et alia. Instead, there is a wash of great symbolism in the movie, weird but intentional plot bits that can be interpreted differently (all to good effect), and some frank acknowledgment that life is sometimes dirty, rough, and rather ugly. Your kids will like it. And if you have no kids, you will be wrapped up in its murky teasing of subtexts to where, had this been a live-action story, you would really dig it.

Now, you may also have heard about some political stuff-and-such about this movie. A lot of conservatives are praising the messages contained within: that depending on government results in slavery, that everyone has a courageous part to play, and that self-reliance is the only way to beat corruption. Maybe—that’s a bit of a stretch. But there were more than a couple of potshots at Obama, with the mayor quoting him here and there when the townspeople needed help and weren’t going to get it. Any of this will sail over the kids’s heads. And, sadly, most of the adults will miss them as well.

So too, unfortunately, will many of the references to classic Westerns. A showdown occurs as the town clock ticks into high noon. Gabby Hayes is reborn as the character Spoons. And one zipped right past the Czar, but not the Цесаревич—he pointed out a very subtle Tombstone reference. Nice work, kid.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.