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Rango

AS Johnny Depp-Gore Verbinski collaborations go, the animated feature Rango may never earn the billions of dollars accumulated by their Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but for my modest money, it’s the keeper.

Instead of combining live action and animation, Rango is completely, immaculately animated — the first wholly animated feature from the folks at Industrial Light & Magic. The form gives Verbinski licence to let his considerable imagination loose, and he duly stampedes across genre lines with a movie that invokes theatre of the absurd, spaghetti westerns, Chinatown, Apocalypse Now, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the comparatively obscure 1968 Don Knotts yukfest The Shakiest Gun in the West.

Depp, the chameleon actor, voices a pet chameleon whose lonely terrarium existence is literally shattered in a highway mishap that sees him abandoned and alone on a desert freeway. He makes his way to the dirty western town of Dirt, where his penchant for theatrical bravado lands him the name and duties of Sheriff Rango.

Soon, the western turns into a detective movie when Rango uncovers a possible conspiracy involving the smooth-talking mayor (Ned Beatty channels John Huston’s Noah Cross character from Chinatown).

The animation, modelled after a videotaped performance of the script by the cast in a no-frills rehearsal space, is stellar. With his scaly eyes, his zig-zag neck and his ludicrous Hawaiian shirt, Rango is surely the homeliest hero Depp has ever portrayed. And yet, he is such a charismatic creation, his ugliness transmogrifies into a thing of Johnny Depp-ian beauty.

Billion-dollar grosses notwithstanding, cartoons are where Gore Verbinski belongs. Four stars.

 

Limitless

THIS movie is about a guy who gets really, really smart. But it would be too much to ask, apparently, that the movie itself might leave a viewer feeling smarter, or provoked, or a touch more aware of the human condition.

Limitless doesn’t aspire to such consciousness-expanding. In this movie, a “four-digit IQ” is just another comic book superpower.

Aspiring novelist Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) doesn’t get his smarts from being bitten by some radioactive Poindexter. In fact, the power comes through a comparatively mundane meeting with his former brother-in-law Vernon (Johnny Whitworth), a guy with connections to a secretive pharmaceutical house. Vernon invites Eddie to partake of a pill that essentially turns on the brain’s unused 80 per cent mass, transforming the user into an instant genius.

Through a twist of fate, Eddie gets possession of a huge stash of these pills, and transforms from shabby loser to witty, erudite urbanite with the ability to predict stock market trends with stunning accuracy.

That latter talent puts him on the radar of vaguely sinister financial titan Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro), who wants Eddie to employ his gifts to ascertain the advisability of an impending merger.

Just a few problems: Continued drug use leads to unexpected side-effects, including sustained blackouts where Eddie has no memory of where he is or how he got there.

Director Neil Burger’s sub-Scorsese visual style includes an admittedly cool endless zoom effect suggesting our hero’s limitless perception. Less inspired is the shot of Eddie writing his book with letters tumbling, Matrix-style, from the ceiling. If that image is supposed to represent inspiration, it shouldn’t be surprising that this movie dully equates super-intelligence with power and wealth.

This is a movie made by the kind of people who would have asked Albert Einstein: “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?”

The DVD extras include an alternate ending and a brief making-of featurette. Two and a half stars.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca