Admittedly this film is a bit more of a slow burn and a think-piece than most animated features these days, with a dark sense of humour and only really having one or two major action set-pieces (the hawk and the canyon chase) so I can see why some people are put off by it or find it dull. Overall I do prefer the more sentimental and normally well-plotted films from the likes of Pixar but I still find Rango quite appealing as it aims a little higher than most non-Pixar CG films in terms of quality and homages so many different works of cinema in it's short runtime, especially Leone's spaghetti westerns and of course Chinatown. Most of the film seems to be more of a character study than anything else, the arc of Rango himself plays out extremely well throughout this film, from a literal 'man with no name' to actually living up to the western legend of 'the man with no name.' The transition of the character from start to finish is almost seamless, there is no way the clueless guy he starts out as would face up to the rattlesnake at the end but when you get to the finale it easily believable that this character would not only be capable of confronting the fearsome villain now but also solve the mystery around the town water supply. Perhaps Rango's main fault is that it is a western, and by their very nature westerns have often tended to be a little long, a little drawn-out and a little slow, which might be why they've fallen out of favour with modern audiences who have become accustomed to their rapid-cut editing, wandering camera takes and in the case of animated features a quip and pun every second sentence.
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