His name isn’t “Rango.” Er, sorry, his name ain’t “Rango.” That’s better. I’m not sure what it is (although imdb says, “Lars.” Umm, ok). It’s possible he’s not sure what it is. After all, he is a chameleon. Clearly suffering from an advanced case of torticollis (a fitting affliction for a reptile, doncha think?), the bent-necked pet lizard went from car crash victim to “stranger-‘round-these-here-parts” before you could draw your Colt 45. And in a desire to impress the tavern locals, the thespian-inclined creature invents a new name and backstory. All we know is his lonely terrarium fell off the back of a family station wagon while our hero was reenacting Shakespeare with a Barbie torso and a wind-up fish.
Rango is neither your average film, nor your average cartoon.
Dirt is a dry town. I don’t mean alcohol-less. I mean dry. Arid. Parched. Waterless. Scorched. Infertile. Take your pick; they all apply. Rango (voice of Johnny Depp) and Dirt become sympatico immediately — well, as sympatico as one can be when everybody in the town is thirsty. And yet, there is water being dumped in the desert outside town. The mystery has begun. Say, wasn’t this the plot of Chinatown? In this town full of anthropomorphic desert critters, are we going to find that love-interest iguana, Beans (Isla Fisher), is both sister and mother to an armadillo or something? Boy, I hope not. Bad enough the woman seems to suffer something on the order of fully-awake narcolepsy.
While it lacks water, Dirt has no shortage of predators and prey in all forms. And through it all, Rango is the very essence of mild. Well, I suppose his drawn demeanor betrays panic and thirst from time-to-time, but Johnny Depp chose to voice Rango not unlike a steady alter-ego, the kind of person he hopes he actually is, which is exactly what this character called for; Rango is an observer reluctantly thrust into action-mode, not a standard action hero by any means. In fact, despite the Chinatown-like premise, none of this film feels derivative. Odd, to be certain. Rango is an asymmetrical hyperbolic pseudonymic reptilian protagonist attempting to blend in a dead panicky Cowtown, all the while playing it straight. Sure, there is an extended family of moles thieving the town water supply and making away with bat escorts … what this scene clearly calls for is dramatic reinterpretation and cross-dressing; places, everyone, places!
I think this is the last Johnny Depp film I truly enjoyed which speaks to a number of issues, none of them good. Some draw Depp’s career-plummet back to the 
original Pirates of the Caribbean and it’s as hard to dismiss the thesis as it is to remember exactly how long that was.
Rango had the unfortunate chronology of being among the best animated films following the very best year in animated film history. Compared to the 2010 crop (How to Train Your Dragon, Despicable Me, Toy Story 3, Tangled, and Megamind), everything was going to look worse, no matter how skillfully crafted, innovative, or thoughtful. Rango is all three of these things and I’d still rank it well below all five films I just named. Perhaps this is a good thing. Given how Gore Verbinski has made a joke out of Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s probably better that Rango was one-and-done, a healthy positive reflection before being tarred with Rango: Dustier Plains or Rango: in Stranger Hides.
Thrust into a land of die-or-die
One lizard gives heroics a try
Not sure he won
After all’s said and done
Perhaps The West will settle for a tie
Rated PG, 107 Minutes
Director: Gore Verbinski
Writer: John Logan
Genre: Depp-rivation
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Animation hounds
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who think 2D lacks Depp-th … or ought to, at least
