![]() The event plays as a comical “meta” coincidence, but if we look deeper I think something else is going on. After a montage of affectations, he realizes that conflict is required to motivate any hero and he is summarily thrown out of the back of a moving car. “I could be anyone.” and since he’s a chameleon, he sort of can. His imagined criticism from a wind-up fish leads him to question his character motivations, but also his own identity. It appears that he has come to believe the inanimate objects are real people, but we can’t be absolutely certain of this, it could be another level of his pretending. He is an actor, and not only an actor, but the star. When we first see him in his terrarium, the chameleon has forged an identity for himself based on the inanimate objects around him. Yes, there’s also a political message about the environment-specifically the diversion of natural water to create the artificial oasis and specter of late capitalism known as Las Vegas. The film is home to several interlocking conflicts, but chief among them is a lizard trying to discover his identity. This review is full of spoilers, so I’d recommend watching the movie first. His name is not actually Rango, a detail you may have forgotten since 2011. It’s not hard to imagine a kid getting bored immediately during the opening sequence when the unnamed lizard protagonist looks directly in the camera and asks, rhetorically “who am I?” Yes, our protagonist is unnamed. ![]() The only kids level humor are the aforementioned bodily humor gags, most of which would pass over the heads of the younger audience members. Much like 1998’s Antz, I question what is here for kids to latch onto, or if this was even intended for kids in the first place. For the sake of the film’s legacy, however, any studio meddling was probably for the worse (as it almost always is). I have no way of knowing how many of these jokes were in the original script, but I do know it’s not uncommon for a film studio to pressure a director to add changes to risky ventures: and a $135 million dollar animated western about an existentialist talking lizard is the definition of risk. It shouldn’t be that surprising, considering this was released under the Nickelodeon Movies brand. Almost all of the jokes fall flat and involve some sort of bodily humor. ![]() Much like Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame and to a lesser extent Laika’s Paranorman, there is a layer of jokes that appears to have been added to make the film more marketable. Rango joins a list of films that I think need fan-edits. Rango is a beautiful film with incredibly ugly subjects.īut before I start praising this film too much I have to mention its main imperfection. Most of them are reptiles covered in bumps and scars, and even the few furry creatures are covered with scars and patches of matted and dirty fur. The character designs all reflect the harsh landscape that birthed them. Rango is also the last animated film I can remember that wasn’t afraid to be ugly. Rango is the opposite of cartoony, with multiple shots that appear photo-realistic. I’m sure there have been a variety of innovations since then, but the computer animated releases we’ve seen have become more and more cartoonish, presumably to avoid an uncanny valley effect. Not only because time appears to be accelerating as I get older, but because visually speaking it is still unrivaled in the realm of computer animation. It’s incredible to me that Rango was first released over five years ago.
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