Rango (2011)

Directed by: Gore Verbinski | 107 minutes | action, animation, adventure | Original voice cast: Johnny Depp, Timothy Olyphant, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, Alanna Ubach, Claudia Black, Stephen Root, Gil Birmingham, Ryan Hurst, Beth Grant, Kym Whitley, Ian Abercrombie, Maile Flanagan, Nika Futterman, Joe Nunez, Hemky Madera, John Cothran Jr., Jordi Caballero, James Ward Byrkit, Chris Parson | Dutch voice cast: Tygo Gernandt, Georgina Verbaan, Najib Amhali, Edwin de Vries, Monique van de Ven

A mischievous and lonely chameleon kills time in his boring existence by coming up with exciting stories. In any case, they give him a fictitious opportunity to lead a heroic existence. But his latest concoction doesn’t go well: “What we need is an unexpected event that will send the hero into conflict.” Thus he communicates to his friends; a wind-up fish, a plastic palm tree, a cockroach on the other side.

Shortly afterwards he is confronted with such an event as quickly as unexpectedly. Via a modern-day highway, the chameleon is hurled into the mythical world of deadly dry deserts and sandy western villages. Spurred on by a mysterious ‘signpost’, he sets out to complete his personal quest; to become, in short, a real hero. At first he describes himself as ‘one of the few men with a maiden name’. But in the process, the scrawny reptile with the voice of Johnny Depp changes into the tough hero with a resounding name: ‘Rango’. In fact, it is already a miracle that Rango, intrepid and inexperienced, even manages to reach the village of ‘Dirt’ after this. Even the little choir of Mexican owls that sing along with his journey cheerfully announces that our hero awaits a speedy end. Dirt is located in the middle of the boiling Mojave Desert. But with the help of the charming lizard Beans, he succeeds. If Rango also manages to eliminate the hawk that plagues the village for good, there is only one possible sequel: the mayor appoints Rango the new sheriff of Dirt. Finally, Rango is who he wants to be: a hero, someone who takes on the heaviest responsibilities with the lightest of minds.

‘His’ Dirt is the ultimate western village; A procession of structures made of wooden barrels, rusty petrol cans and dented mailboxes parades along a dusty main street. Post office, town hall, prison, church. And of course there’s a grim saloon, where filtered light and the classic sounds from ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ still provide suspense. There are a lot of unsavory types walking around here: fat toads, gila monsters, porcupines. But the population’s biggest problem? There is so little water that even effervescent tablets are consumed with a glass of air. The last scrap of transparent gold is jealously treasured in the local bank’s vault. Until that is taken away. Unfortunately, Rango himself unwittingly contributed to that theft. He does everything he can to catch the perpetrators and the water. In the process, the outlines of a far greater crime begin to emerge in Rango’s mind. Why have all the sources dried up so suddenly? What is the role of the mayor and his clique? Why is he trying with all his might to buy up Beans’ land?

‘Rango’ is literally and figuratively a pet project by Gore Verbinski: he directed and produced the film, contributed to the story and even has some voice roles in it. To portray the exploits of a chameleon, ‘Rango’ – a quasi-mystical western – really uses the full spectrum of earthly colors. The detail, the versatility and unbridled fantasy with which Rango’s world is animated, make you feel the drifting sand in your eyes, that you get a dry throat, when you see how the last drop of water in town evaporates, that you enjoy the magnificence of a sunset and shudders at the squinted eye of ‘Rattlesnake Jake’. As befits an animated film, ‘Rango’ quotes to your heart’s content from other sources: ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, ‘Chinatown’, Verbinski’s own ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, a series of westerns, but also Dali, Tolkien, Kubrick and the Ancient Greeks can be distilled from ‘Rango’ on a meta level.

‘Animate’ means as much as ‘bring to life’. And where the makers succeed with verve in enlarging a world full of amphibians and reptiles to human proportions, you are also brought to life as a viewer by the speed and story of ‘Rango’. Afterwards, you may conclude to your own surprise that you have empathized from start to finish with a chameleon with slumped shoulders, round eyes and a penchant for Shakespearean sentences.