Publication Date: 06-29-2026

Rango (2011) review

Dir. Gore Verbinski

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★★½

A good friend’s love for Gore Verbinski’s movies has only intensified my own personal affinity for the diverse, out-of-the-box auteur, and a recent chat made me want to revisit Rango. Here’s a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed when I first watched it back in 2011, and am thrilled to say that, 15 years later, with the benefit of being older and allegedly wiser, I enjoyed it even more upon rewatch.

I am unsure what most kids (12-and-under) made of Rango upon its initial release, but the box office numbers were strong and the buzz was strong enough to carry it to an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. I only ponder because this is a radically different work from Nickelodeon Movies, who would also release The Adventures of Tintin around the same time, marking a more creatively daring era for the usually solid-yet-predictable children’s network. I compare Rango to King of the Hill both in humor and the fact that you find yourself appreciating its subtleties, nods to genre, and inspiration from other movies as you get older and more experienced.

Brightly colored and peppered with dimensional characters — as realistically ugly as some of them may be — the film’s titular character (voiced by Johnny Depp) is an unremarkable pet chameleon with a dry sensibility. When he accidentally falls out of his owners’ car, he stumbles upon a tiny, creature-run Western civilization known as Dirt, who is strong-armed by Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) and precariously close to running out of water.

Rango makes his presence known by pretending to be an outlaw, but stumblebums his way into killing a hungry eagle, who has been feasting on the residents of Dirt. The mayor (Ned Beatty) makes him sheriff, and his next task is finding a consistent water source. Oh, and a desert iguana named Beans (Isla Fisher), whose family’s ranch risks complete collapse due to the ongoing drought. No pressure, Rango.

It’s easy to sneer at an animated movie whose credits include a plethora of A-list celebrities. Rango silently makes the case that perhaps the presence of big name actors loaning their voices to animated creatures isn’t the problem; thinly drawn characters are. There’s a dimensionality to the many citizens of Dirt, including Alfred Molina as an armadillo looking for the “Spirit of the West,” and Abigail Breslin as a spunky cactus mouse. Even the legendary Harry Dean Stanton is a mole bandit, whose duties are further complicated as he’s a father. This “Spirit of the West” character? Timothy Olyphant. Exquisite.

Rango is absolutely lovable. Depp loans him a softspoken, jittery sweetness that makes him a credible, but not helpless, unlikely hero. Gore Verbinski adds visual splendor to more than a handful of exhilarating moments that echo everything from Star Wars to the helicopter sequence in Apocalypse Now. There is a wonderful chase scene involving Rango and an eagle (prior to his arrival in Dirt) where our lizardly hero must take refuge in an empty glass bottle, use it as a vehicle, and make the hasty decision of whether or not to help a frog who failed to help him. A lot happens in mere seconds. The west has consequences and doesn’t favor the patient.

There’s also one profoundly emotional moment, perhaps the darkest in any Nickelodeon Movie yet, involving a despondent Rango crossing the road. It’s a remarkably mature moment that goes beyond the typical “sad character leaves to sulk” trope, and what follows is a transcendent beat for the spirit of the film (quite literally). Gore Verbinski’s works are always more-than-meets the eye, both visually and thematically, so it’s only right that his first venture into animation is as dynamic as one of his supercharged or deeply contemplative dramas.

Voiced by: Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, Abigail Breslin, and Timothy Olyphant. Directed by: Gore Verbinski.