Gore Verbinski
Rango

THE REVIEW

In the distant 2011, a small film from the unknown Nickelodeon Movies paved its way through the films of rival Dreamworks, managing to bring home the statuette for Best Animated Feature. An advertising campaign focused solely on Johnny Depp's voice, lent to the chameleon protagonist, and the film quickly faded into oblivion. A real shame, because Rango deserves to be revisited for far other reasons.
Sure, the basic plot is quite classic: a domestic chameleon finds himself lost in the Mojave Desert and by a fortunate chance is mistaken for a hero by the citizens of a (not really) old western village in need of help to resolve the alarming water crisis.
What amazes are the style and staging, combined with an exceptional technical department. The splendid animations are provided by Industrial Light & Magic, in its first test for an entire CGI film, and considering it was a decade ago, the result is still astonishing, from the accurate rendering and characterization of the various animals to the orchestration of the most intense scenes (the stagecoach chase with an army of bats in pursuit is a joy for the eyes). Gore Verbinski demonstrates all his visual talent even in animation, allowing himself many moments of splendor and epic breath, aided by a Hans Zimmer in great form. The western setting is curated in every detail (and homage), evident is the affection for the genre from the creative team.
The cast delivers respectable performances at the microphone, do yourself a favor and watch it in the original language if possible, Johnny Depp does a fantastic job bringing the bumbling chameleon to life. An honorable mention also goes to the extraordinary Bill Nighy (the already Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean), his gun-slinging snake made quite a few young viewers tremble in theaters according to reports.
In general, it's hard to imagine children enjoying it as much as their parents, the atmosphere is rich with nonsensical moments and the tone is decidedly skewed towards an adult audience, from the plethora of filmic citations (from the more sly like Apocalypse Now to the less noticeable ones like El Topo) to the numerous jokes made of double entendres and bad taste.
The most pleasant surprise is anyway the subtext. At a superficial glance, Rango may appear as a naive animated film with anthropomorphic talking animals, but scratching the surface, it is actually an existentialist tale about a bumbling chameleon lost in the middle of the desert and within himself, a nameless character undecided on which role to play in this world. Sequences like the opening and the desert dream are the beating heart of a story rich in Pirandellian echoes.
The film met with moderate commercial success, barely recovering production costs at the box office despite its excellent critical acclaim. It's likely that audiences around the world, especially the younger ones, found themselves slightly bewildered by this hybrid. Years later, it definitely deserves a second chance.