I think Gore Verbinski has found his true calling as a
director. I don’t know why I didn’t see it from the Pirate of the Caribbean movies, but he is most suited to directing
animated adventures. After all, the exploits of Captain Jack Sparrow are
nothing but cartoon action using live actors amid a whole bunch of CGI. But
last year’s Rango, Verbinski’s first
stab at an animated feature, is a marvelous little gem of a movie.
Johnny Depp gives full life and voice to the title
character, a chameleon who gets lost in the desert and unwittingly becomes
sheriff to a dying town replete with rats, muskrats, lizards, tortoises and
other desert vermin. It begins with Rango staging heroic plays and tableaux
with literally lifeless supporting characters. This is because he’s a pet in a diorama
being transported by car along the highway. It suddenly occurs to him that in
order for his stories to be more interesting, to give his eponymous hero more
depth of character, there needs to be an ironic twist that flings his
protagonist into an unexpected situation. Then what do you know? His cubicle
home gets flung from the car and smashes on the highway leaving him to fend for
himself in the desert.
