Any initial quality of the film that you infer from the size of the audience when I went to see it (I was one of only two people in the cinema, let alone the screen, and the second person was that one I'd gone to see it with) should be thrown away. The lack of an audience can be put down to the facts that the only showing that week was at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Friday, when most kids would be in school, and that as poor students we'd both been waiting to have the money to go, so we were five or six weeks past its release.
Now, if you happen to be a cynical person who believes that a pastiche of a Western, particularly one aimed at a younger audience, will never work, one fact is irrefutable- the frontier never grows old. Not only this, but the storyline is very good (as originality goes among Westerns, just watch the endings of Shane and Pale Rider side by side). Rango isn't just a pastiche, it is really a proper Western, with stereotypes fleshed out to be characters in their own right. And let's face it- even some of the best Westerns from the last fifty years were relying on much flimsier leading casts.
Scuppering the cynical argument completely, though, is the fact that this is not a film written for the kids that you might think Nickelodeon are aiming for. The wise people among film studios, including the top dogs at Pixar, aways say that you should never underestimate the intelligence of children. They write films for adults and children together, without the jokes and references for adults and the jokes and (the more infrequent) references for children being mutually exclusive. Now, Nickelodeon haven't underestimated their audience's intelligence at all- rather, it may be that given the source material, the wealth of Westerns that already exist and that are riffed on in the film, they've rather overestimateed the knowledge that kids have and the links they'll make.
Take, for example, the meeting of Rango (in a beleaguered, dehydrated and semi-ethereal state) and the Spirit of The West. Rango has strayed into a sort of vision-like episode in the baking desert. The first connection is that it is a Johnny Depp character in a white wasteland being a bit crazy- as he did at the beginning of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 when Jack Sparrow was in Davy Jones'
And out steps the Spirit of the West. To adults, he is instantly recognisable. The hat, the poncho, the chiroot between thin lips. That squint. This man is Blondie. He's the Man With No Name. He's Preacher. It is Eastwood incarnate, and all kudos should be made to Timothy Olyphant for voicing such a stellar impersonation.
However, to kids he's just a cowboy, maybe that cowboy in the thing Dad likes. He's not instantly recognisable and the jokes that he carries a metal detector (the modern method,obviously, that would be used in prospecting and panning for gold, that staple of the Western and the frontier) and collects glinting gold Oscars (the reches reaped by Eastwood's directorial and acting abilities) are easily lost on the kids who don't know him. However, it is worth noting the bravery of being so 'meta'.
Sure, the film has its share of universal humour; Beans, the female lead and love interest, has a defense mechanism of freezing mid-sentence; Rango belches all over the Ray Winstone-voiced thug and then later drops his gun belt when told to "Make your move", even the blind prospector and his idiot boys lifted from Chinatown and Pale Rider are reduced to a comedy trio. The mariachi band narrating the film will be lost completely on younger views as anything but the funny birds, too, which is a shame.
On top of all this, the film is dark. Given the opening quarter of an hour of Up, which features life, love, youth and death, and the places other Pixar ventures have taken their audience, kids films and the darker aspects of life have been tied for quite some time, and so they should. Roald Dahl never shied away from it. The question of where to stop, though, is perhaps key, and while censoring is wrong and I stand by the fact that the terrifying forest scene in Snow White is simultaneously the best and most scarring piece of cinema I watched before I was five I would say that Nickelodeon push it here. Which is a very good thing, and gives the film its edge over other studios, but it is worth mentioning as it may not be for everyone to let their three year old see. An armadillo with a tyre track through his middle greets the newcomer to the desert. His next encounter sees a rock toad killed by an eagle. The antagonist gunslinger, Rattlesnake Jake, is genuinely sinister (a good turn by Bill Nighy, who lately has seemed to be obviously him in most roles, be it voice work, CG-laden or live action- that changes here).
By the end of the film, good triumphs and all that, but the evil turncoat mayor who welcomed the newcomer Rango then, in a twist pulled from Chinatown was revealed as the villain (voice by Ned Beatty, someone who recently played an evil turncoat patriarch fluffy pink bear call Lotso, who welcomed newcomers then was revealed to be behind the dark things in the day care centre- ringing any bells?) is then left by Rango to Rattlesnake Jake's mercy. We don't see if the gunslinger snake eats the turtle or not, but still. A bit dark?
It needs to be said, in a bit of an aside to the rest of this review, that as a whole the film stands up perfectly well against the more giant animation studios like Pixar. The animation is top notch, grittier, more down and dirty with its designs while still being clear and crisp and flawlessly fluid. The voice acting too is solid, with a foundation of performances worthy of being in the next Pixar blockbuster. What it all amounts to, really, is that should Nickelodeon want to be a bigger part in the cinema of animated films they can be, and Pixar would perhaps finally have some competition in their little private corner.
Which brings us once again to the plot riffing on Westerns which the kids won't understand. The close is a good parallel to the lonely gunslinger trope that shot Eastwood to fame, not to mention Wayne and many others in the fifties and sixties before the Spaghetti Western revived the genre, and pastiches it perfectly. Without prior knowledge of the genre, though, would Rango be as good a film? I'd say no. Simply because so much of it works by relying on you as a viewer to be aware of what it is trying to mimic, joke about, in short do. Which is one reason why I'd say it is, while marketted as a kids' film, really and not so secretly for us adults.
My advice- teach your kids the ways of the Western, then get them to watch it again. They'll thank you for it. Having done that, they'll see Rango for the eight out of ten it deserves to be, not the six out of ten it is for the uninitiated.
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