Academic

So Spring Break saw me taking four children ages 9 to 12 yesterday to see Rango.  For the most part, the movie has gotten great reviews, and the other contender, Mars Needs Moms, seems to be a disaster.  So,even though my third-grader warned me that some of his friends didn't like it, off we went.  The best part is that the movie was not gratuitously shot in 3-D, so we just paid the regular matinee price.

So, if you've heard about Rango, you know that the movie is a cross between a Clint Eastwood western and Chinatown.  A strange combination for a children's film.  Here's the plot in a nutshell:  an unnamed chameleon, who wants to be an actor (but probably really wants to direct) is traveling in his terrarium in the back seat or hatchback of a car on the highway through the Mojave desert.  As the cars all swerve to avoid an armadillo in the road, our chameleon is tossed out into the roadway, glass shattering all around him.  A strange, existential scene with the armadillo ensues where he speaks in vague riddles.  Our hero quickly realizes that there is not a lot of water out here in the desert and that lizards need water, so he follows the armadillo's vague directions to a town, where he is told water comes on Wednesday.  The chameleon (who really does not blend into his surroundings very well or very often, saying "it's an art, not a science") arrives at an 1800s ghost town, named Dirt, filled with interesting Wild West characters.  Borrowing a page from hundreds of stories from The Brave Little Tailor to Shark Tale, our chameleon, who ironically does not blend in, convinces the town that he shot a group of seven brothers "with one bullet."  Quickly, our chameleon becomes Sheriff Rango and the town's best shot at peace.

Though the town has actual lawbreakers (Jake the Rattlesnake most of all), it's real enemy is drought and the severe lack of water.  At noon on Wednesday, the mayor (voiced by Ned Beatty, but drawn after John Huston) turns on the tap for the townsfolk to gather water.  Only now the tap is dry and the bank, which held the water reserves, has been robbed.  The town is doomed and only Rango can save it.  He slowly (rather too slowly) comes to realize that the mayor ("if you control the water, you control everything") is the enemy, starving the town for water while pulling off the real estate heist of the century.  I won't tell you how it ends, but be relieved to know that there is no Faye Dunaway character or any nostril-slicing.

The third-grade boys laughed at much of the humor and enjoyed the action sequences.  They took the film at face value -- a film about a chameleon who saves a town from an evil mayor and Jake the Rattlesnake.  The seventh-grade girls walked out muttering "Weird."  The girls also said the film should have been rated PG-10 because TV words like "damn" and "hell" are thrown around with wild abandon and one character, after being trapped under Rango's skirt (disguise) for awhile, announces that the experience was "not entirely unpleasant."  Because so many artsy people have raved over Rango, I hate to admit that I really don't get it.  The movie is visually stunning.  Rango's eyes, for example, are amazing.  Also, I think people in the entertainment industry (or people who are interested in the entertainment industry) like it because it's sort of a movie-maker's movie.  (Imagine a deus ex machina that is Clint Eastwood driving a white golf cart with his academy awards stacked in the back.)  If you know a lot about spaghetti westerns, then you may appreciate the movie more.  Unfortunately, my children are neither experts on spaghetti westerns or up on Hollywood in-jokes, so they may have missed a few things.

But what about Johnny Depp?  Yes, Depp is Rango, but I might not have known from listening.  OK, first I don't think I remember what Depp's real voice sounds like (his nonpirate, non-Wonka, non-Mad Hatter voice).  For the first five minutes, I thought Rango's voice actor was Steve Buscemi.  Then, once Rango starts to throw in accents in his Captain Jack-esque monologues and asides, it seemed like he could be Depp.  But part of the greatness of Depp's characters is his facial expressions, which aren't picked up thoroughly by even the artfully-drawn chameleon.  I think watching Depp act out the lines in costume would have been hysterical, though.