Rango

In this animated film from George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic, a rootin'-tootin' reptile has taken over the Southwest in the form of a bug-eyed, charismatic, CGI chameleon named Rango, manically voiced by Johnny Depp. The downtrodden denizens of a drought-plagued town, aptly named Dirt, are desperate for law and order when Rango appears as a lonely outsider searching for his identity after being accidentally liberated from his terrarium in the Mojave Desert. During his often surreal quest, Rango encounters Roadkill (Alfred Molina), a partially crushed armadillo who advises the chameleon to find “the spirit of the West” because “we all have journeys to make.” Inspired, Rango concocts a story about killing seven brothers with a single bullet—and promptly becomes sheriff of Dirt. As the tale develops, the shifty mayor (Ned Beatty)—a wheelchair-bound turtle—engineers a water shortage in order to acquire property, and Rango finds a love interest in a feisty female lizard named Beans (Isla Fisher). Rango also features a mariachi band of morose owls serving as a Greek chorus, a hallucinatory vision of Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name (Timothy Olyphant), and a showdown with a villainous rattlesnake (Bill Nighy). Despite uneven humor and some slow pacing, director Gore Verbinski (who collaborated with Depp on the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies) delivers an entertaining diversion with cleverly inventive, irreverent cinematic allusions that add to the fun for cinephiles. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include a “Real Creatures of Dirt” featurette on critters featured in the movie (23 min.), deleted scenes and an alternate ending (9 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are an audio commentary (by director Gore Verbinski, writer James Ward Byrkit, production designer Mark “Crash” McCreery, animation director Hal Hickel, and visual effects supervisor Tim Alexander), a storyboard reel picture-in-picture track, the two-part behind-the-scenes featurette “Breaking the Rules: Making Animation History” (49 min.), an interactive trip to the animated town, and bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a fine extras package for a winning animated film.] (S. Granger)