Rango

The film gets off to a great start, the action scenes are witty and brisk, and Zimmer's great music works wonders. I found the main idea and especially its development rather weak and far from fulfilling my expectations, but the pace is quite high, the director successfully and originally gives us a taste of several different genres, and the main character himself wins your sympathy from the beginning and becomes incredibly entertaining with his immediacy and a reasonable amount of goofiness. My only real regret is the boring and clichéd ending, where the screenwriter either didn't know what to do anymore, or tried to make Rango into something more than just a throwaway kids' show. As an animated flick, it’s above average, but as an adventure comedy, it will soon fade from my memory. 3.5* (2011-07-27)

Too bad I didn't see the film in the original language! Otherwise, of course, the animated fantastical West! Overall it was conceived in a nicely normal way... almost makes me wonder how a child viewer can "chew on" this. And even though perfect animation is nothing exceptional nowadays, here I am truly impressed... and that music... hmmmm. A new take on the animated film. (2011-03-21)

If the Spirit of the West spoke in the voice of the real Spirit of the West, Rango would be lacking absolutely nothing. The biggest advantage of this (mostly) adult cartoon is its director. Gore Verbinski has a habit of throwing ideas around and impressing with action scenes, but not forgetting to have a well-constructed story, humor and character portrayal. And just like in (especially the second) Pirates of the Caribbean, he succeeds here. In addition, the ILM computers turned out flawless, perhaps 99% realistic animation, Hans Zimmer wrote his best music since Sherlock Holmes, and each of the actors who dubbed the lizards, rodents, birds and others clearly had a great time doing it. Just like me. (2011-06-19)

Rango is more about episodic gems than about its story. But these gems are an avalanche of fresh ideas, paying homage to famous westerns, Robert Rodriguez movies and even Pulp Fiction. The characters of bearded lizard hombres spitting in the dust who are rendered more vividly and with greater attention to detail than Clu in Tron: Legacy are a true feast for the eyes of genre enthusiasts. Hans Zimmer’s post-Sherlock music laced with Mexican motifs spices up the comical episodes and boosts the action ones that are shot and edited better than anything you’ve seen in the best action flicks. And there are significantly more jokes aimed at adults than at kids. (2011-03-08)

The film features excellent individual elements that stand out on their own (Clint), underlined by spectacular visuals (Deakins), playful music, and a horde of allusions, quotes, and parodies. Unfortunately, the result of the aforementioned is a rather incoherent patchwork, whose issue is not so much that it dabbles in multiple genres, but rather that it lacks the real wit that might have brought (paradoxically!) a bit of childishness in Verbinski's writing, the absence of which, on the other hand, I can quite understand after the Pirates trilogy. (2011-08-03)