'Lone Ranger' deserves eternal loneliness

A western based off of a 1950s television show, featuring Armie Hammer as the titular ranger, and his Native American sidekick Tonto, played by Johnny Depp with a $215-million budget? Oh, and it comes from the Disney powerhouse team of Gore Vebrinski as director and Jerry Bruckheimer as producer, a duo of “Pirates of the Caribbean” fame?

Sounds okay, right? Like, it would be at least mildly entertaining?

No. No. No. “The Lone Ranger” is one of the worst movies to come out this year, and there have already been a number of absolute flops.

Just so I can begin my uninterrupted tirade of describing why this film is so painful, let me tell you the two (count them, two) good things about this movie. The scenery is absolutely beautiful, and the finale is an uncharacteristically fun gallant of a train takeover.

Now that those are out of the way, let’s start talking about why “The Lone Ranger” fully deserves to be the biggest box office failure of the year, as it’s on track to be.

For starters, the tone of “The Lone Ranger” is so frustratingly arrogant it’s difficult to watch. Johnny Depp is now reprising the role of himself, while Armie Hammer plays the deadpan John Reid. I never once cared for either one of the characters. Granted, Hammer’s performance is slightly more redeemable than Depp’s, but nonetheless, the acting is poor. I may have audibly groaned when Helena Bonham Carter took the stage, with her contrived and annoying accent. (Note to Hollywood — the Depp/Carter duo is done. Was done. Will always be done.) Depp, with his bold and offensive strokes of “Native American” is so mind-numbingly boring in this film that I have no problem continuing to think of him as one of the most overacted actors in Hollywood.

The plot of the film is boring and uninteresting. We watch as Hammer takes on all the bad guys of the railroad industry to avenge his family’s death. Back to the film’s arrogance, “The Lone Ranger” gives us nothing to latch onto. It just assumes we’re going to love everything about the movie, notably the lead duo. Disney, if this film was intended for the 13 and under crowd, they won’t understand it. If it’s meant for the adult crowd, they won’t care.

The pacing goes from slow to slower. It feels like we’re taking a walk in the film’s desert with no wate — a never-ending walk to an unknown destination. Granted, this may be in part to the film’s two and a half hour running time (back to the arrogance); the film easily could have been a half hour shorter and it would still feel too long.

I’m so happy “The Lone Ranger” is going to cost Disney so many hundreds of millions of dollars and so much pride. It serves them right. You can’t slap a few big names on a poster and give it such an overinflated budget that it borders on astronomical and just expect it to be a winner. In the end, the quality of the movie is what will make people come.

And “The Lone Ranger” is just absolutely, completely, through and through, terrible.