Rango-Hot Take

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 Rango (2011 US) A domesticated Chameleon voiced by Johnny Depp finds himself the sheriff of a corrupt town and he also finds spiritual enlightenment after having an existential crisis.  Salon dot com coined a termed and associated it with this film. They called it Kidult animation. Yup that's about right. So much of this will go over a kiddos head, like way over. For Example this exchange with a prophet armadillo: 

Depp: I need to find water

Prophet: To find water you need to find dirt.

Depp: Umm sure?!

You don't get the joke until Depp shows up in a town called Dirt. OK I see what you did there but it took twenty minutes to get to the punchline. Kids won't get that or at least most kids. There was a lot of call backs to classic westerns including Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. The spiritual element is pretty strong. So yeah, Kidult. Rango won best animated feature at the 2012 Oscars. Well deserved. I don't' know why but for some reason I always thought it did poorly at the box office but that simply isn't true. I did very well but it has a rep for being a failure. Maybe because it wasn't a kids film? I don't know. Needless to say it's one of my favorites. Find it on Netflix or for rent on most streaming. 


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