A solid animated film

Rating: 7/10 (5 June 2012)

From the back of three Pirates of the Caribbean films, Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp reunited to work together, working on Verbinski's first animated film, a film which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Film.
An unnamed and lonely pet chameleon with a lot of acting (Depp) ends up strained in the middle of the desert after a car accident. Desperate for water the chameleon ends up in a western town called Dirt which in the middle of a water crisis and in the local saloon comes up with a new identity as the gunslinger Rango. After Rango accidentally kills a hawk he is celebrated as a hero and becomes the main of the town and is quickly put on the case to find out what is happening to the town's water.
Rango is a wonderfully animated film, with a great amount of detail and was able to get a balance between realism and cartoonary, Rango being the most cartoonary looking creature. Because of the animation Verbinski is able to give the film an move the camera to unique places, do incredible shots and make some good action sequences, the scene with the bandits on bats whilst Ride of the Valkryie was an incredible action scene.
There is a great voice cast, Depp was unrecognisable as the lead character, someone who suffers an existential crisis, trying to come up with an identity for himself in the world. He was obviously have a lot of fun in the role and Verbinski inhabits the cast with a lot of people Depp could work. Isla Fisher is a strong as the love interest and strong western world woman, who has a fun running gag that she freezes up as defence mechanism, but she does turn into a dismal in distress. Abigail Breslin too has good comic timing as a child character with a dark scene of humour. There are great supporting acting like Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Ray Winstone and Timothy Olyphant, who are solid through and provide some more serious characters in the film.
But is most weird about the film is humour which is dark and morbid. There are some moments that are just out of place, like in the beginning with Road Kill (Molina) who is pretty much sliced in half, a bit dark for a family film and most of the jokes have a dark/adult tone. They are jokes geared to adults like Thespian one but then there are some toilet and fart jokes which felt out of place. There is a chorus of owl who did provide a lot of humour, but there was one fourth wall joke I did like when Rango gets them play for a montage, with one of them even playing an electric guitar: its hardly a deal breaker but it annoyed me. There were moments I laughed heavily like when Rango gave his gun to a child and when Rango punches a woman, and other moments I did smile at.
Rango is entertaining and enjoying with some great animation and action. But I personally thought Kung Fu Panda 2 was a better animated 2011 film for the whole family.
3.5/5.