Movies

A must in the dust

By March 1, 2011No Comments

Rango

The most pleas­ant, heck, even exhil­ar­at­ing, sur­prise of the year so far is Rango, which may actu­ally count as being of the largely chi­mer­ic­al “one for me” cat­egory of motion pic­ture, as it comes to us cour­tesy of two of the prime movers of the Pirates of the Caribbean fran­chise. The above image con­sti­tutes the ref­er­ence to Henery Hawk that I cite in my offi­cial review of the film for MSN Movies, which I hope you’ll check out. And the film, too. Hope you check that out. 

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  • The trail­er is delight­ful, so I’m glad to have it Kenny approved. Logan also wrote Red (the Rothko play, not the Willis shoot-em-up). That’s some diversity.

  • Glad you liked, Glenn. I must have been at the same screen­ing and I liked it a lot, too. Sort of like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” as anim­ated by Basil Wolverton and Big Daddy Roth. But for the kids.

  • bill says:

    Yeah, I thought this looked really good when I first saw the trail­er. Glad to hear that confirmed.

  • Oliver_C says:

    Given that a real chamele­on is cap­able of turn­ing its eyes in entirely inde­pend­ent, oppos­ite dir­ec­tions, its whole life must be one long split-screen montage.

  • christian says:

    I’m not sure why every­body has been prais­ing the trail­er – the jokes are bey­ond obvi­ous – fall­ing and burp­ing – but hope­fully the movie is more than the ads.

  • bill says:

    There’s a lot more than fall­ing and burp­ing jokes in that trail­er. I know, because I saw it. But it’s your relent­less pos­it­iv­ity that keeps us read­ing, Christian.

  • christian says:

    I guess I should just get with the pro­gram, eh?

  • bill says:

    Yes, that’s pre­cisely what I meant. Hell, not even what I meant – that’s pre­cisely what I *said*!

  • Oh this is a pleas­ant sur­prise! I liked the trail­er too, and thought “I should see that!” The next day, I thought “Wait, why in god’s name did I get taken in by a trail­er from Nickelodeon stu­di­os?!?!? Was I high?!??!? Or rather, was I *that* high?!?!?” Yet a nig­gling hunch per­sisted that maybe this really was going to be good, even as I became more dubi­ous about my ini­tial reac­tion to the trail­er. Glad I can see it without won­der­ing, like a Patricia Highsmith char­ac­ter at each step what the hell am I doing.

  • Glenn Kenny says:

    Just for every­body’s info, the film prop­er does­n’t even come close to hav­ing the bodily-function-humor quo­tient of “Blazing Saddles,” an acknow­ledged clas­sic in the Western-comedy genre. Or that of the Coen’s “True Grit” for that mat­ter, even. In fact, the only real bath­room joke in the movie is centered on the actu­al makeup of the “out­house” Rango hides in at one point. As for the burp­ing, well, it comes with the ter­rit­ory. Spitting, too. And yes, Christian, you SHOULD get with the pro­gram, and insert the Charlie Sheen joke of your choice after that phrase…

  • EOTW says:

    But what will Jeff Wells think?

  • Your review describes a movie I would nev­er have known exis­ted, if I only had its TV com­mer­cials to go on – the ad cam­paign for this thing is HORRIBLE. I’ll toss it on the Netflix queue when my wife’s not looking.

  • This movie is the real fuck­ing deal. See it big, see it loud, see it as often as pos­sible. But it might freak out some kids in some spots. They call those kids “lame-o’s” where I come from, fwiw, but those kids deserve love, too, and the oppor­tun­ity to see an early shoe-in for, you know it, THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR. Given it’s hard to ima­gine any film nerd not lik­ing this movie and all its quotes and gags and puns and col­ors, where­as the Pirates movies are way unruly (but awe­some), I hearby mark this my “toldja so” moment with Gore Verbinski. Dude may very well be a genius.

  • Pete Segall says:

    I came across the trail­er a couple months ago scout­ing for new stuff to take the little one to. Alas, this won’t be it (we don’t call him a “lame‑o”; we call him a three year old) but I was aston­ished at the ball­sy­n­ess of the look. By the end I’d for­got­ten that the trail­er had been pre­ceded by “Nickelodeon.” Really, you fig­ure Logan and Verbinski had to squelch a lot to get this thing in with a PG rat­ing. I mean, it’s a Western with Johnny Depp and Alfred Molina. We know how those go.

  • My sis is a 14yo lame‑o, she will likely get a lil sweat goin…

  • Pete Segall says:

    Okay, yeah, 14, that’s a little, erm, lame. To be hav­ing the freaking.
    No offense to sis or anything.

  • A pure heart allows all oth­ers their dance and unfold­ing, even if the oth­ers end their incarn­a­tion in death or disease.

  • Ann Force says:

    Ann Force

    Wow, great article.Much thanks again. Awesome.