Rango (Showing March 2011)

Film/Movie Title: Rango (March 2011)

Type: Animation, Comedy

DIRECTOR:
Gore Verbinski (The Weather Man, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's Ends)

WRITERS:
John Logan
Gore Verbinski
John Logan
James Byrkit

PRODUCERS:
Gore Verbinski
Graham King
John B. Carls

CASTS:
Johnny Depp as Rango, a chameleon
Isla Fisher as Beans, a desert iguana
Abigail Breslin as Priscilla, a cactus mouse
Ned Beatty as Tortoise John, Mayor of Dirt, a desert tortoise
Alfred Molina as Roadkill, an armadillo
Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jake, a rattlesnake
Stephen Root as:
   Doc, a rabbit
   Merrimack, a Mexican ground squirrel
   Mister Snuggles
Harry Dean Stanton as Balthazar, a mole
Maile Flanagan as Lucky
Timothy Olyphant as the Spirit of the West
Ray Winstone as Bad Bill, a gila monster
Ian Abercrombie as Ambrose, a burrowing owl
Gil Birmingham as Wounded Bird, a Chihuahuan raven
James Ward Byrkit as:
   Waffles, a horned toad
   Gordy Papa
   Joad
   Cousin Murt
   Curlie Knife Attacker
   Rodent Kid
Claudia Black as Angelique, a fox
Blake Clark as Buford, a Sonoran Desert toad
John Cothran, Jr. as Elgin, a bobcat
Patrika Darbo as:
   Delilah
   Maybelle
George DelHoyo as Señor Flan, a member of the owl mariachi band who plays the accordion
Charles Fleischer as Elbows
Beth Grant as Bonnie
Ryan Hurst as Jedidiah
Vincent Kartheiser as:
   Ezekiel
   Lasso Rodent
Hemky Madera as Chorizo, a shrew
Alex Manugian as Spoons, a mouse
Mark McCreery as Parsons
Joe Nunez as Rock-Eye
Chris Parson as:
   Hazel Moats
   Kinski, an antelope jackrabbit
   Stump, a jackrabbit
   Clinker
   Lenny
   Boseefus
   Dirt Kid
Lew Temple as:
   Furgus
   Hitch
Alanna Ubach as:
   Boo Cletus
   Fresca Miss
   Daisy
Gore Verbinski as:
   Sergeant Turley
   Crevice
   Slim
   Lupe, a member of the owl mariachi band who plays the violin.
Kym Whitley as Melonee
Keith Campbell as Sod buster


PLOT: (from WikiPedia)
An unnamed pet chameleon (Johnny Depp), whose only friends are some toys and a dead cricket, becomes accidentally stranded in the Nevada desert. After meeting an armadillo (Alfred Molina) who is seeking the mystical Spirit of the West, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a hawk. The next day, after having a surreal nightmare, he meets the lizard Beans (Isla Fisher), a rancher's daughter, who takes him to Dirt, a tiny, Old West town populated by desert animals.
While Beans discovers that the water reserves, stored in a water-cooler bottle in the bank, are dangerously low, the chameleon, using bravado and acting skills to fit in, presents himself as Rango, a tough drifter. He quickly runs afoul of the outlaw Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), and narrowly avoids a shootout when the hawk returns, scaring Bill and his partners off. A panicky Rango is chased by the hungry hawk until by pure luck he kills the predator by crushing it under an empty water tower he's accidentally caused to collapse. In response, Mayor Tortoise John (Ned Beatty) appoints Rango the new sheriff. A skeptical Beans demands that Rango investigate the water problem while the townsfolk fret that the hawk was the only thing keeping the gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake from returning to terrorize them.
That night, Rango inadvertently gives some mole robbers the location of the bank and tools to get into the vault. When the townsfolk find their water has been stolen. Rango organizes a posse that finds the body of bank manager Merrimack (Stephen Root), mysteriously drowned in the desert. They eventually track down the robbers in their mountain hideout, only for their leader, Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton), to reveal that his clan of moles, prairie dogs and others greatly outnumbers the posse. Nabbing the covered wagon water-bottle, the posse flees, chased in a large ground and air fight before discovering the bottle is empty. Despite the robbers professing that they'd discovered it empty, the posse takes them back to town for trial, perplexed as to who stole the water.
After Rango and Beans deduce that the Mayor has been buying all the land around town, Rango recalls the mayor telling him how controlling water equals control of everything. He confronts the mayor, who denies he has done anything wrong and shows Rango that he is building a modern city on the old land. With no proof of the mayor's wrongdoing, Rango leaves, while the mayor orders one of his men to call Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) — who soon arrives, firing shots with his gatling gun tail, and recognizing that Rango is a fake. Jake runs him out of town after humiliating him and making him admit that everything he told the town about himself is a lie.
Ashamed and no longer knowing who he is, Rango wanders the desert, finds his old friends (the toys) and in a daze meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant), a cowboy whom Rango identifies as the Man with No Name. The Spirit inspires Rango and tells him, "No man can walk out on his own story." With the aid of the armadillo and mystical moving cacti, Rango learns the source of Dirt's water is Las Vegas, and that someone has shut off the valve on a water line. Realizing the mayor's hand in this, Rango recruits the hill clan in his plan.
Returning to town, he calls out Jake for a duel — a diversion so that the hill folk and the cacti can flood the town with water, with a geyser sending Jake into the air. The mayor threatens Beans' life, forcing Rango to surrender. The two are put into the water tank to drown, in which they kiss, while the mayor prepares to shoot Jake using Rango's gun, telling him that the old western times are over and that Jake will be forgotten just like Rango. The trapped Beans and Rango use a bullet to break the tank, flooding the room and taking out the mayor and his men. Jake prepares to attack Rango and Beans but sees the one bullet laying in the wet sand saying "one bullet" remembering that Rango said he would end this whole ordeal with one bullet. Acknowleging that Rango is a worthy opponent, he then grabs Mayor Turtle John and drags him into the desert to take his revenge. Rango, Beans and the other citizens of Dirt celebrate the return of the water. Throughout the film, an owl mariachi band provides commentary that breaks the fourth wall.

PHOTOS:



NEWS: (from WikiPedia)
The film was produced by Nickelodeon Movies, Gore Verbinski's production company Blind Wink, and Graham King's GK Films. The CGI animation was created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), marking the first feature animation done by ILM, generally a special effects company. During voice recording, the actors were given costumes and sets to "help give them the feel of the Wild West". Star Johnny Depp had a 20-day window in which he could voice his role as Rango, and the filmmakers scheduled the supporting actors so as they could do their scenes with Depp and interact with him. Verbinski said his attempt with Rango was to do a "small" film after the large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, but that he underestimated how painstaking and time-consuming animated filmmaking is.
Rango's teaser trailer was released on June 9, 2010, along with the film's official site, RangoMovie.com. It shows an open desert highway and a orange, wind-up plastic fish floating slowly across the road. On June 28, 2010, the first poster was released, showing the character Rango. A two-minute film trailer was released June 29, 2010. Another trailer was released December 14, 2010. The trailer was fully shown on TV during a Nickelodeon airing of iCarly. It features the song "The Whip" by Locksley. A 30-second spot was made specifically to run during Superbowl XLV on February 6, 2011.
In the USA and Canada, Rango debuted in 3,917 theaters, grossing $9,608,091 on its first day and $38,079,323 during its opening weekend, ranking number one at the box office. Overseas during its first weekend it earned $16,770,243 in 33 countries. As of March 7, 2011 it has earned $60,607,752 worldwide.

CRITICS:
Rango received positive reviews. As of March 4, 2011, it has an 88% rating on the film critics aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 139 reviews. The site's consensus says, "It may not be as charming as it thinks it is — and it certainly isn't for kids — but Rango is a smart, giddily creative burst of beautifully animated entertainment" Richard Corliss of Time applauded the "savvy humor" and called the voice actors "flat-out flawless." Bob Mondello of National Public Radio observed that "Rango's not just a kiddie-flick (though it has enough silly slapstick to qualify as a pretty good one). It's a real movie lover's movie, conceived as a Blazing Saddles-like comic commentary on genre that's as back-lot savvy as it is light in the saddle." Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, noting the nervous but improvising hero's resemblance to the Don Knotts character in The Shakiest Gun in the West, echoed this, saying that "with healthy doses of Carlos Castaneda, Sergio Leone, Hunter S. Thompson, Chuck Jones and Chinatown ... this the kid-movie equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino picture. There's no gory violence or swearing, of course, but there sure is a film buff's parade of great movie moments." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "some kind of a miracle: An animated comedy for smart moviegoers, wonderfully made, great to look at, wickedly satirical.... The movie respects the tradition of painstakingly drawn animated classics, and does interesting things with space and perspective with its wild action sequences." In one of the few negative reviews, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune acknowledged its "considerable care and craft" but called it "completely soulless" and that watching it "with a big suburban preview audience was instructive. Not much laughter. Moans and sobs of pre-teen fright whenever Rattlesnake Jake slithered into view, threatening murder.

MOVIE TRAILERS: