"Rango"(2011) Movie Review

When I first saw the trailer for "Rango" I was leery about it but as more clips began to arise on the internet I began looking forward to seeing it. By the time it came out I was actually kind of excited and now after seeing it I was rather disappointed. The plot just kind of goes along with very little depth, and the characters had such flat personalities to the point that I didn't care what happened to them.  It had a few good moments and some interesting imagery at times but on the whole I could not get into it. It also didn't help that "Rango" had bad attempts at crude humor scattered throughout the movie, which I found rather distasteful.
     The one highlight of the movie for me was the character stylization and animation. The characters were very unique and detailed beautifully which is something that more CGI animation companies should utilize. CGI gives the opportunity to do way more detailing then was ever possible in traditional animation, so it bothers me that companies like Dreamworks and Pixar keep pushing the cartoonified simplistic look in their animated films. Another positive for Rango was that they used the actor's for reference instead of motion capture which gave the characters a better feeling of life. So I commend Industrial Light & Magic for a job well done on the work they put into "Rango".
     On  the negative side though was the character designs themselves. I was unable to identify what a lot of the character were supposed to be! I watch a lot of nature films so when I go to see a film were the characters are meant to look like desert animals I want to be able to tell what they are. (Why bother making them animals at all if they don't look or act like the animal they represent.)  But I guess I can let that go since the character were very unique.
     So basically I think the movie is worth seeing at least once for the animation and stylization.  So if you have a descent TV at home you may want to wait until "Rango" is out for rent.
(I give "Rango" a 2.7 out of 5)
*Note: I had trouble giving a score to "Rango" as it wasn't completely bad, but I did not enjoy the movie and will probably never watch it again. Since a 3 usually means I may watch it again, I gave "Rango a 2.7 because I wont watch it again but I didn't feel it was bad enough to deserve a 2.