The Lone Ranger

I try not to read reviews of films I plan to see. Regrettably when I heard about the low opening weekend box office I knew things were bad. This was another Disney home run that went foul. The movie was also guilty of false advertising. The trailer showed exciting scenes with the sense the film was going to be a light hearted buddy movie. Trailer speaks with forked tongue, Kemo Sabe.

Johnny Depp narrates the story as an old Indian in San Francisco in 1933 talking to a nebbish kid with a cowboy hat and mask. Depp is part of a diorama tilted the Noble Savage. It’s kind of weird, is Johnny real or part of the kids imagination. It was not that complicated in Night at the Museum.

The script is a mess. The impression is that the writers made up the story as they went along. It was a car wreck. There was the cannibalistic villain, a homicidal megalomaniac railroad executive, a corrupt whinny cavalry officer, a one legged madame with an ivory scrimshaw left leg prostheses that shoots bullets and the Comanches (or what was left of them). Strangest of all were these razor sharp tooth attack bunny rabbits that had no compunction of eating their own. They were on scene for about ten seconds and served no purpose to the plot. These diverse elements never congealed. This divergence failed the film.

This movie did not have the light hearted spirit of the Pirates of the Caribbean. Evil in Pirates was more suggested. In the Lone Ranger some parts are grim and even too brutal to watch. However, there were a few scenes that made you smile. Johnny Depp’s make up with a dead crow on his head and his deadpan persona is funny. Armie Hammer had a huge white hat the size of a toilet bowel. Even Silver had a few funny scenes (this horse was whiter than Lady Gaga). Johnny and Armie had good chemistry, which was wasted.

Basically the Lone Ranger is a buddy movie. During the movie the buddy and the lead switch. Sometimes Tonto was the sage, at other times he was the comic relief. Arnie was mostly stiff faced and strangely reluctant to shoot the bad guys. This is a Western, everyone ever one gets shot!

The railroad special effects are impressive. Silver running on top of moving railroad cars is exciting. The William Tell Overture made its debut towards end of the movie.  The TV Lone Ranger show only used a few hallmark bars of the overture. The movie played the whole megillah. I guess the bigger the score the bigger the tie in to the legend of the Lone Ranger.

The last time of the Lone Ranger was on TV was about 45 years ago. Enough time has elapsed that the slate is clean (the millennialismists don’t have a clue about history anyway).The producers could have made any movie they wanted, they picked wrong one.