I was hesitant to recommend Rango to everyone because I thought i could be too emotionally attached, after having spent a year working on it, to make a fair judgement. But now I've moved on from it for another year and having watched many other films since then, I found myself still enjoy watching it again.
It's the most beautiful animated films I've ever seen. Ironically, it's populated with some of the most ugly characters. The magic of films is fully used here to create a believable world and fill it with living creatures that are breathing and thinking and having emotions just like us. The dusty desert and rusty old western town look so real you can almost feel thirsty just by staring at them. And the animals that live in the world look so realistic, it feels like being in a dream where everything is impossible but logical at the same time. The last time I felt like this was when I saw a bunch of brachiosaurus browsing among the trees in the Jurassic Park over 15 years ago.
In a movie full of characters(there are 160 of them!), every character, even if he's just an extra with 2 lines of dialogues, has his own personality and little background story. And all these characters -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- contribute to the plot, which was carried out seamlessly by the improv-style acting of the voice actors.
The music is just as breathtaking as the imagery. Every time when I hear that butt-ugly rodent playing "ride of the valkyries" on a banjo while riding on the back of a bat, it cracks me up and fills my eyes with tears. It's such a brilliant stroke!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGzvc5eiRY
I have to admit it's not a perfect movie. It's wacky and awkward in many ways. The plot is compromised as a result of paying homage to too many movies. But in a world that churns out a dozen cartoon films a year, most of them with a vibrant color pallet and some cute fluffy talking animals in 3D(I hate 3D movies, they make me dizzy.), rango stands out for having chosen a different path. I love movies that are authentic, original and beautifully flawed. And Rango is just one of them.
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