Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty
Rating: PG

Rango (voiced by Johnny Depp) and Beans (voiced by Isla Risher).(Courtesy photo)

After seeing Rango, I’m tempted to go back and watch all my childhood cartoon favorites to see just how much went over my head. While many cartoons will have a few subtly addressed topics or risqué jokes so that kids’ parents won’t get bored, Rango is unique in that it combines philosophical themes with classic movie throwbacks to keep the adult viewers engaged.

As we learn from a narrating mariachi band of owls, Rango, voiced by Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd), is a scrawny chameleon who ironically always seems to be out of place. He isn’t entirely sure of his purpose on Earth, but he gets a chance to make a difference when he stumbles upon the desert town of Dirt. Dirt is in the middle of a terrible—and awfully suspicious—drought, and the various desert fauna that live there are starting to panic. After all, in the dry and desolate Old West, whoever controls the water controls everything. A local named Beans, voiced by Isla Fisher (Confessions of a Shopaholic), wants to find water for the town, if only to save her father’s ranch. However, the mayor, voiced by Ned Beatty (Network), assures her that if there were a way to get water, he would know, wouldn’t he? But after the town’s meager supply of water is stolen, the newly appointed Sheriff Rango must go looking for the culprits and save the town.

Director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) isn’t kidding around in this “spaghetti western” tribute movie, which makes me wonder why he decided to make it a kid-friendly cartoon. Nevertheless, the decision, albeit an odd one, serves the movie well; the animations are colorful and captivating and they allow Verbinski to go outside the physics of the real world, whether for meaningful epiphany sequences or simple burping-fire gags. John Logan’s (Gladiator) screenplay, while at times formulaic, goes beyond our expectations of a cartoon about animals by instilling its main character, whose real name we don’t know (he makes up the name “Rango”), with a metaphysical need for self-affirmation. As you might guess, it’s an extremely weird script for a cartoon, but it works. Logan doesn’t throw away the more complex conflict for the sake of a predictable plot, nor does he take out the serious moments for the sake of entertaining kids with bathroom jokes (although, to be sure, there are a couple of those).

Even with the moments of physical humor, even with the caricatures of the Old West town, even with our hero’s bizarrely big-eyed-but-small-pupiled face, I wouldn’t call this a funny movie. Verbinski, Logan, and the voice actors all take the characters too seriously for this to be just a light comedy. That might be something of a drawback, depending on what you wanted to see. Thankfully, Verbinski doesn’t go too far, so we don’t get bogged down with the spiritual blahs when Rango has his existential episodes. And if we do sometimes get a little confused by his ramblings, the vibrant and highly expressive animations keep us interested.

Rango is a safe bet for kids, even if it is a little darker than your average cartoon. If today’s little kids are anything like I was, they won’t understand the references to Chinatown or Clint Eastwood, but that’s for the best; by far the most disappointing part of this movie is that the Clint Eastwood character—“The Spirit of the West”—isn’t actually voiced by the man himself. But then again, if that’s the most dissatisfying part of a movie, it’s doing pretty well for itself.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.