4 stars (out of 5)
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Timothy Olyphant, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Ned Beatty, Ray Winstone
Rating: (PG)
Good actors come in all shapes and sizes, but when they come in a particularly attractive guise you tend to forget they can act.
Women make such a habit of going weak at the knees over Johnny Depp it would be easy to surmise that his fame is all down to his good looks. But in the animation Rango (Rialto and Hoyts) he quickly puts that idea to bed.
Depp can do as much with his voice as the plainest of character actors and he has a grand time proving it.
As Lars, a chameleon who compensates for his lonely existence in a terrarium by staging elaborate dramas, he is pitchforked into a real drama by an accidental release into the wild.
Lars finds himself in the town of Dirt and reinvents himself as Rango, the sort of straight-arrow law enforcement the town needs.
There is something going on in Dirt, something to do with the water, and Rango means to get to the bottom of it.
Adults will be checking movie references off on their fingers, but the children will just be enjoying a rip-roaring story of corruption in high places.
The only note of caution I would sound is this is not for very small children, 7 and up is the safest bet.
Best thing: I saw this with a theatre full of children and they mostly sat and watched it, a major triumph for a children's movie.
Worst thing: The creatures that populate Dirt are not on the cuddly side of mother nature's ledger, and the animation renders them in fascinatingly horrible detail. At times it is enough to put you off your popcorn.
See it with: Your cowboy boots on. There is something about this movie that makes you want to start walking bowlegged and take up spitting tobacco juice.
- Christine Powley
