For years, Pixar have dominated the brave new world of computer generated animation. Films such as Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc. and The Incredibles made the studio the undisputed king of a new genre. Even Disney’s patronage hasn’t blunted their creativity, the animation house releasing two of its best films, WALL-E and Up, in the last few years.

Dreamworks have been the only studio providing any sort of competition, but their films are patchy at best. For every Shrek and Antz, there’s a Madagascar or Bee Movie. Dreamworks can’t match the clever weaving of subtext that makes Pixar's output such effective entertainment for both younger and older audiences.

Well, there’s finally a new competitor in town. Nickelodeon Movies and Industrial Light & Magic have teamed up to deliver the delirously deranged Rango, and while it’s not quite WALL-E, it’s light years ahead of Shrek Forever After.

Rango is not your typical hero, even by animated film standards. He’s a wiry chameleon who, voiced by Johnny Depp, bears more than a passing resemblance to Kermit the Frog – in attitude as well as looks. Rango’s a mild-mannered sort, but loves to act and has a deep desire to be loved. So when a car accident pitches him out of his home tank and into the Mojave desert, he takes the opportunity to reinvent himself and soon becomes the sheriff of Dirt, a one horse western town populated by rats, possums, owls and moles.

The denizens of Dirt have hit dire straits. In a vigorous series of nods towards Chinatown, the town is desperately short on water, and while the seemingly genteel tortoise mayor (Ned Beatty, doing such a good impression of John Huston that I thought for a moment it might actually have been his son, Danny) assures everyone that salvation will soon be at hand, some start to suspect fowl play.

Rango should be pretty straightforward stuff but often comes close to getting mired in its own worship of numerous other films. There were no kids at my screening, but I could imagine them getting a little fidgety with the slightly labyrinthine plotting (although Ratatouille this ain’t). Still, the pic earns points for paying homage to its influences rather than just flippantly referencing them. Besides Chinatown, both Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy and his later epic, Once Upon a Time in the West, come in for some detailed pastiche, as do High Noon and The Grapes of Wrath.

Director Gore Verbinksi, veteran of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, handles the action with a deft hand and allows the humour to flow naturally. The voice acting is superb also, Depp in particular possessing a talent to immerse himself in his roles that’s much like this film’s title character; he plays Rango like he truly cares about the put-upon chameleon. Elsewhere, Bill Nighy (yes, it’s a bit of a Pirates love-in) licks his lines effectively as Rattlesnake Jake and Timothy Olyphant proves an Eastwood-imitating revelation as The Spirit of the West. The smaller roles aren’t neglected either, with such luminaries as Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone and Alfred Molina all popping up.

And what it carries in acting talent, Rango matches in looks. This is arguably the sharpest (technically speaking) computer animated film yet, the detail on some of the animals making you check your vision, lest the filmmakers have inserted a real creature in the animated version’s stead. That technical expertise is solidly braced in a more traditional filmmaking sense, with cinematographer Roger Deakins acting as consultant and Hans Zimmer winking like crazy at Morricone as he supplies a lush but nimble score.

But for all its brilliance and all that talent onboard, Rango isn’t quite perfect. At certain times the film seems to slow down when it should be speeding up, and an easy ten to fifteen minutes could have been shaved from the running time. There’s a cheeky iconoclasm running through the subtext, but it disappointingly stops short of becoming fully subversive, former punk rocker Verbinksi careful not to upset the kids (and maybe the studios) too much. The biggest problem is arguably Rango himself: it takes a lot of Depp’s skill to get the audience onboard with the chameleon – he’s initially drawn just a touch too lightly, and his story takes a beat longer than it should to kick into gear.

Still, even if this was middling in execution it would get points for originality, and this is plainly not a middling piece of filmmaking. Rango could look in the eye some of the best Pixar films, and while it might be the one to eventually blink first, it has stirred the pot of the computer-animated genre for the better. More of this please.


I say: A superior animated film that could have done with being just a touch tighter, Rango can only come highly recommended.

See it for: The great performances and some truly eye-popping animation. No pesky 3D either – huzzah!