Rating of
4/4
Rango is wonderful!
Looneymanthegreat - wrote on 04/02/13
I struggled with this movie since its release, partially because I had some trouble defending why I like it as much as I do, but mostly because nobody else seems to like it as much as I do. In a Looneyman run world Rango would probably be its own religion, Rango 2: Rattlesnake Jake’s Revenge would have been the highest grossing movie of 2012 and the Palisades Rango Action Figures would be raking in millions. Fortunately for the rest of humanity I am not dictating the taste of humanity. Unfortunately for me there is no proper Rango club or Rango fan site that I can join. Everyone (except me) forgot about this movie mere months after it was released, and now I’m alone, driving a fan-wagon that nobody else ever got on.
Rango, much like The Muppet Movie, is a surprisingly deep children’s movie. But unlike The Muppet Movie I don’t think the creators thought much about children when they were making it. The movie has some surprisingly crude and un-pc humor (my favorite kind of humor,) which isn’t incredibly bad, but still quite a bit more then most modern parents would want to expose their five-year old (“Thespians? But that’s illegal in seven states.”)
It also pay’s homage to dozens of classic movies, most notably Chinatown and most obviously the shakiest gun in the west. But there are little references to all sorts of classic movies, most of which the little kiddies have probably never seen.
I think that’s part of why I like this flick. The jokes and references fly so fast and often that it’s hard to keep track of them all, I see some new joke, reference or gag in the films slick script every time I watch it, and every freaking one of them makes me laugh. Combine that humor with a contemplative message about personal identity and some beautifully ugly images and I’m hooked
