Dirt, a ramshackle town in the Mojave Desert, is so dry it might better be called Dust, but it sure proves fertile ground for Rango, an animated western that’s effortlessly the most exhilarating flight of computer-drawn fancy since Ratatouille.
Rango’s not just a kiddie-flick (though it has enough silly slapstick to qualify as a pretty good one). It’s a real movie lover’s movie, conceived as a Blazing Saddles-like comic commentary on genre that’s as back-lot savvy as it is light in the saddle.
Populated by dog-eared rabbits, desiccated gophers, skinny mice and all sorts of other critters, the town of Dirt is presided over by a garrulous turtle (voiced by Ned Beatty) and regularly terrorized by predators. Chief among the varmints is Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), a Gila monster with a reptilian gang backing him up, and Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) who’s got what looks like a Gatling gun where his brethren have rattles. But even Jake slithers away when pursued by the hawk that soars regularly overhead and that early in the film swoops after a screaming, seriously out-of-his-element chameleon (Johnny Depp) in a loud Hawaiian shirt.
How’d the chameleon get here? Long story. Let’s just say he hit a bump in the road while seeking a true identity that he will find, more or less accidentally in this ghost-town-in-the-making. He’s a hero, albeit not a conventional one. A lizard with no name, he’s a suburban tenderfoot and thespian-in-training who’s been raised in a terrarium with only a plastic tree, a wind-up fish and a broken doll as companions.
Still, chameleons are nothing if not adaptable, and once he’s learned to walk the Western walk, this chameleon will be calling himself Rango, cozying up to a lady lizard named Beans (Isla Fisher), pinning on a sheriff’s badge and — armed with more bravado than common sense — taking on bad guys.