Monday Morning Movie Review: Rango Finds the Beauty in Ugly

I don’t know what’s in the water this week but just like I enjoyed The Adjustment Bureau I also found Rango to be better than almost any film I had seen this year. This strange, beautiful film showed me something I didn’t even know was allowed in kid’s films anymore: ugliness. Not bad ugliness, but for kids movies where every square inch and surface seems polished beyond sanity (even Toy Story 3 could be mentioned here), actually seeing something less than Pixar beauty was a revelation. Instead of seeing creepily “perfect” lawn gnomes like in Gnomeo/Juliet we are treated to leathery snake skin with the occasional scar, an old, sinister turtle that could double as Boss Hog, and a mouse creature whose face is so wrinkled and ugly I think it might scare smaller children.

By contrast, even the old man in Up’s “wrinkles” seemed smoothly sanded down to a botox shine. Just so I’m clear: it isn’t that Rango the film is ugly. Actually, it’s gorgeous from the desert settings to the way it accurately catches the ghost of shifting sand blowing over each hill. It’s just that it actually allows its characters to have a scar, a wrinkle, realistically detailed cellulite, neck fat, eyes that have been scarred over, etc. By exploring the roughness of the old west Rango lets kids know they don’t have to look perfect to be the star of their own show.

What Works: There’s just a lot of things in this movie I’ve never seen exactly in a kid’s film (a hideous mole riding an equally hideous bat to chase a not-conventionally-cute lizard for a stolen jug of water being one of them). Also, Rango has an identity crisis early on that feels like pretty unique stuff for an audience that laughs at fart jokes. And having the film’s big villain, Rattle Snake Jake, have a machine gun for a rattle was pretty interesting too.

What Doesn’t Work: There’s an area in the middle of the film before Rattle Snake Jake shows up that sort of sags. It’s not bad; I was just getting a little drowsy instead of paying attention like I did early on during the strange first third (which might have some parents leaving early).

What I Would Have Done Differently: Nothing major. Some parents have complained that the film curses too “much” but they’re talking about the word damn twice and the word hell about ten times. It’s nothing I would have even noticed but I guess Americans want to keep their kids as sheltered as possible, which is also why some parents had a problem with the “ugliness” I praised in the first paragraph. Specifically, one character has an arrow through his eye that feels like pushing it I guess. I would say adults that don’t have kids might like this movie more than adults that do.