RANGO (2011) ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Gore Verbinski
A lizard on a family road trip drops onto the highway and out of his broken terrarium and wanders through the desert into the Wild West. In a dusty, godforsaken town called "Dirt", he gets involved in a war over water rights that mirrors the story in "Chinatown", complete with a wheelchair-bound villain transparently modeled on John Huston's Noah Cross. It's hard to tell what the intended audience for this is supposed to be. The references to older films will fly right by young kids, who might be frightened by some of the imagery and violence. But with its furry (and scaly) critters and cartoon cuteness, it's not playing just to grownups, either. Which doesn't make it a bad movie, just kind of a puzzling one for the marketing department. Roger Deakins helped with the cinematography, Hans Zimmer and a mariachi band of owls play around with the musical score, and there's an amusing encounter between the lizard (voiced by Johnny Depp) and another Depp character from a previous film. And for anybody who's watched even a couple of westerns in the last 50 years, wait till you see who turns up as "The Spirit of the West".
