Rango

If the Spirit of the West spoke in the voice of the real Spirit of the West, Rango would be lacking absolutely nothing. The biggest advantage of this (mostly) adult cartoon is its director. Gore Verbinski has a habit of throwing ideas around and impressing with action scenes, but not forgetting to have a well-constructed story, humor and character portrayal. And just like in (especially the second) Pirates of the Caribbean, he succeeds here. In addition, the ILM computers turned out flawless, perhaps 99% realistic animation, Hans Zimmer wrote his best music since Sherlock Holmes, and each of the actors who dubbed the lizards, rodents, birds and others clearly had a great time doing it. Just like me. (06/19/2011)

Too bad I didn't see the film in the original language! Otherwise, of course, the animated fantastical West! Overall it was conceived in a nicely normal way... almost makes me wonder how a child viewer can "chew on" this. And even though perfect animation is nothing exceptional nowadays, here I am truly impressed... and that music... hmmmm. A new take on the animated film. (03/21/2011)

For the passage where this was a not holds barred spaghetti western that in each camera angle and every tone nods to its roots, Verbinski can dig Leone up from his grave and shake him be the hand as equals. The only snag is that this constantly oscillates between surrealist animated adventure for adults, packed full of references to movies that are rarely nodded at (kicking off right at the beginning with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, for instance), through ingenious, slapstick inspired situations in Pirates of the Caribbean style, to spaghetti western. And all of these passages separately are gems, but they don’t work together, getting in the way of each other, because each of these approaches alone are enough make (and deserve) a feature length movie of their own. So on one hand it resuscitates several dying genres (not just western or surrealist, but also intelligent, non-ridiculing parodies or pastiches and CGI animation works as such), on the other it rather wastes the potential. And you must watch it in the English language version, not so much for Depp as for Nighy and Olyphant, and the Czech subtitles are playful and inventive (although very loose) for a change OST score: 5/5 (03/11/2011)

Rango is more about episodic gems than about its story. But these gems are an avalanche of fresh ideas, paying homage to famous westerns, Robert Rodriguez movies and even Pulp Fiction. The characters of bearded lizard hombres spitting in the dust who are rendered more vividly and with greater attention to detail than Clu in Tron: Legacy are a true feast for the eyes of genre enthusiasts. Hans Zimmer’s post-Sherlock music laced with Mexican motifs spices up the comical episodes and boosts the action ones that are shot and edited better than anything you’ve seen in the best action flicks. And there are significantly more jokes aimed at adults than at kids. (03/08/2011)

The film features excellent individual elements that stand out on their own (Clint), underlined by spectacular visuals (Deakins), playful music, and a horde of allusions, quotes, and parodies. Unfortunately, the result of the aforementioned is a rather incoherent patchwork, whose issue is not so much that it dabbles in multiple genres, but rather that it lacks the real wit that might have brought (paradoxically!) a bit of childishness in Verbinski's writing, the absence of which, on the other hand, I can quite understand after the Pirates trilogy. (08/03/2011)