Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Lone Ranger Review: Basically a Pirates of the Caribbean movie set in the Wild West



I have to admit, I wasn't all that impressed with The Lone Ranger when I first saw the trailer. I also wasn't sure if there was going to be sufficient on-screen chemistry between Johnny Depp who plays Tonto, and Armie Hammer, who plays the titular character, to help propel the narrative along.

But then, being a huge fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, though alas not the tepid 4th Pirates flick On Stranger Tides, I was nevertheless still intrigued by the movie. After all, the major players from the Pirates trilogy are teaming up once again to make what Disney hopes will become another huge moneymaking franchise à la Pirates of the Caribbean. Director Gore Verbinski, check. Actor Johnny Depp, check. Writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, check. Music scorer Hans Zimmer, check. I was really interested to see what was going to come out of their latest collaboration.

Armed with free tickets to see a preview in San Francisco, we couldn't get into Monday's screening but managed to nab great seats for the Wednesday screening. The narrative begins in San Francisco, 1933 (which, when the wording appeared, was punctuated with whoops and cheers from the San Francisco audience) where a young peanut-munching boy dressed up as The Lone Ranger meets an elderly Tonto who is displayed as the noble savage in a carnival exhibit. It is through this narrative device, an old Tonto recounting to the boy how the Lone Ranger came to be, that the story is framed, which unfortunately gets tired pretty quickly when the narrative is constantly being interrupted by the young boy contradicting some detail of Tonto's story.

Despite the rather lengthy screening time of 149 minutes, I was never once bored throughout the movie and had a rollicking good time. The movie was funny, violent and silly. At times my movie companion would hunch forward in her seat and cradle her head in her hands because she just simply couldn't believe how silly some of the stunts were, but the movie is silly in a good way. As in "so silly you can't believe this is happening but you are still enjoying it and going along for the ride silly". Not "please God when will this horrible shtick end" kind of silly.

For both better and for worse, throughout the entire movie I was almost consistently reminded of Pirates of the Caribbean. There is more than a hint of maverick Jack Sparrow in Depp's Tonto, and Armie Hammer's John Reid and Ruth Wilson's Rebecca Reid basically take the place of Orlando Bloom's Will Turner and Kiera Knightley's Elizabeth Swann as the requisite romantic couple. Instead of a scene-stealing monkey or parrot, here we have a scene-stealing white stallion. And when a minor villain who serves as a comic relief character cross dresses with bonnet and parasol, you'll go, "Hang on, don't we have a character just like that in Pirates of the Caribbean?" and you'll be absolutely right. Even the elaborate stunts in The Lone Ranger has the energy and vibe reminiscent of the stunts in Pirates of the Caribbean. And if it seems like I am punctuating every sentence with the phrase "Pirates of the Caribbean", it is because I was constantly reminded of it when I was watching The Lone Ranger. Does that make The Lone Ranger a bad or good movie? Well, that depends on whether you like the Pirates of the Caribbean triogy, and whether you actually care to see its antics reprised in the Texan desert instead of on the high seas.

3 and a half stars out of five stars for me. 4 out of 5 stars for my movie companion.

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