My husband was watching "Rango" last night, and I sat down for a few minutes before I left for a reading. The film is sheer delight! You can tell that Gore Verbenski and Johnny Depp had a lot of fun making it, and the jokes are fast and furious. The script is a super witty hodgepodge of old western movies, "Chinatown" and everything else but the kitchen sink. The animation, or whatever it's called these days, is brilliant, original and goofy. The voices of the characters are hilarious and distinctive. Isla Fisher as Beans and Abigail Breslin as the little girl are especially great. Though Depp is the glue that holds this chaos together. I love the "quest" theme, the spiritual search of a lost and lonely soul, Rango, to be exact. He's the perfect incarnation of "act as if". He's been a lizard dreaming of acting and shaping his world, then he falls off the car and gets his chance. The quartet of owls as a marharchi band is the coup de grace. I laugh out loud every time I see it.
Which brings me to a film from last year universally reviled: "The Lone Ranger". Same director, same star. It's on the five worst films lists, the ten worst films lists, you name it. And I really don't care. I adored this movie and laughed my head off in the theater. I recently bought the DVD and confirmed that either I am crazy, or the whole world is. What do you think? I found the script hilarious, and I loved the fact that Tonto was the smart one and the Ranger an idiot. The mask repartee was fantastic. The horse deserves an Oscar. Helena Bonham Carter was terrific, as usual. Tom Wilkinson was a complicated, tricky villain. I feel the cost of a ticket was nothing compared to the sight of the Lone Ranger riding through a train at full speed.
I don't always love Johnny Depp, really I don't. There are movies he makes I don't even see, including any based on Hunter S. Thompson. But I love the crow on his head, the makeup, the comments he makes, his voice, which is a mixture of every Italian who ever played an Indian in the movies. His humor in this role is closer to Indian than about anything I've ever seen, and he is part Cherokee, so it makes sense. I'm part Indian, and I delighted in this version of Tonto. He's not a loyal sidekick, he's a guy thrown into a situation with an idiot white man and making the best of it.
Yes, this film is over the top. Did we need a homage to the TV series? I think not. This film is not sacrilege unless you felt some religious meaning from a silly TV series. It is a PARODY. It's satirical. No, it is not made for kids. It's made for adults. So was "Rango". Hello.
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