Do people really mean it when they complain about the lack of originality in movies? After all, the very meaning of the word "genre" refers to the ability to categorize films based upon the traits that they share. The traditions and cliches of the shoot-'em-up actionier, the romantic comedy, the slasher film and the period costume drama each provide different factions of viewers with a warm blanket-like sense of comfort. Filmmaking is an art form, but it is also a business, and something of a gamble at that. A film based off of a concept or another piece of media that there is already some idea that audiences will like seems like a more lucrative prospect than a wholly original concept. What worked before will be milked and milked into working again until audiences appear to be sick of it, then possibly dusted off some couple of decades later and re-animated for the purposes of nostalgia.
Furthermore, almost all filmmakers are film buffs - otherwise, why would they want to be filmmakers? - and all of them seem to bring their influences to the table. But there is a difference between a director who lovingly fashions a patchwork quilt out of films and other media he reveres, and one who shallowly regurgitates the past six months' most recognizable pop culture references, YouTube clips, supermarket tabloid headlines and Pussycat Dolls songs. This type of cheap pandering to the lowest common denominator is what I believe people are really talking about when they complain about films' lack of originality. But I am happy to report that, with Rango, Gore Verbinski has created a beautiful example of the former.
Johnny Depp voices the titular lizard, who spends his days merrily acting out Shakespearean scenes with a wind-up toy fish and a headless Barbie, until he ends up separated from his human owners and stranded in the Mohave desert. After an encounter with a mysterious armadillo, and a Dali-esque hallucination set to songs from a Greek chorus of mariachi owls, he winds up in the desolate town of Dirt, populated by a ragged assortment of varmints standing in for numerous Western film archetypes. The denizens of Dirt treat water as currency, but due to its scarcity, their economy is in shambles and many of them have lost hope. The town's mayor seeks out Rango, who has already attempted to use his acting skills to pretend to be a tough cowboy gunslinger, and appoints him sheriff - although his motives may not be as pure as it seems.
Rango feels like the film that Verbinski - whom, based upon The Ring and the Pirates of the Carribbean films, I had previously thought of as merely a well-behaved studio journeyman - had been waiting his whole career to make. The picture is a love letter to the cinema from its most broad and obvious aspects (it looks and feels like a spaghetti western version of Wind in the Willows, and the plot points dealing with the shady corruption of water rights is cribbed directly from Chinatown) to its tiniest in-jokes (blink and you'll miss a cameo from animated versions of Hunter S. Thomspson and Dr. Gonzo). The ragged and even endearingly disgusting critters that make up its principal cast - many of whom look like something Beatrix Potter would dream up if she was wandering around the American desert whacked out on peyote - have a tactile, three-dimensional quality that is rare in computer animation. Coen Brothers DP Roger Deakins is listed as a visual consultant in the credits, and I mean it as no backhanded compliment when I say that the breathtaking vistas in this film rival the scenery in No Country for Old Men and True Grit.
Despite its numerous cinematic and cultural allusions - from The Big Sleep, Apocalypse Now, Dead Man and El Topo to Chuck Jones, Carlos Castaneda and the Muppets - I would have to say I disagree with the consensus of critics that Rango is a treat for adults that fails at its job of being a children's film. True, it's not likely its target audience will have seen many of the films that directly inspired it, but ideally, this film will serve as a gateway drug for budding cinephiles, much like the way that Star Wars inspired me, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, to go out and rent Metropolis, 2001, and the movies of John Ford. Additionally, like a kid-friendly Inglourious Basterds, Rango is a film that alludes to classic film genres to stress its message about what storytelling can mean to both an individual and a society. While its particular brand of subtle quirk, lived-in scruffiness and offbeat surrealism may not appeal to all, I guarantee that a sizable faction of young moviegoers will someday credit it as the picture that planted the unkillable seed of cinephillia inside their wee hearts.
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