Rango

Household pet Rango the chameleon accidentally finds himself in the town of Dirt, a town in crisis in the Wild West. With his fresh start, Rango begins a journey to save the town and discovers his own identity along the way.Movie genre:Animation/Action/Adventure/ComedyRated:PGOpening date:  March 4th, 2010Starring:Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Timothy Oliphant and Abigail BreslinDirector:Gore VerbinskiTobacco use:At least 60 instances – there were too many to count!  On a side note, the only other animated film with this amount of smoking is 101 Dalmatians.Movie ReviewThis was a fun movie to watch and enjoyable for young and old. The animations were well done and the Western soundtrack was catchy.  It was fun to watch the characters develop in the scenes of romance, comedy, action and adventure.  The overall message is positive, and the story was entertaining. I would recommend the movie to facilitate discussion about Smoking in Movies. I couldn’t believe the effort it took to animate scenes with cigarettes in them, and for what purpose?  I was reminded of the smoking scenes 101 Dalmatians and seeing them again in Rango was even more realistic.  I thought about all the other animated movies that managed to create believable villains without relying on tobacco use.  I went to the movie with a friend, and interestingly he did not notice many of the scenes with tobacco use.  He knew that I was there to review the smoking scenes in the movie, and yet he would still be surprised when I bumped his elbow and said, “There’s another one!”  I think that just emphasizes how smoking in movies can still affect the viewer without them being consciously aware that it is occurring. With that said, it could be argued that smoking in the Wild West was historically accurate, but in my opinion it was not crucial to the plot.  As a children’s movie especially, I do not think viewers need to see villains smoking to emphasize that they are the antagonists.I was disappointed with the high incidence of smoking and tobacco use in this film.  Considering the link between smoking in movies and youth tobacco use, I think that the rating for this movie should have been much higher than PG. This is an animated children’s movie, smoking did not need to be included in the first place.