Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp are following up their profitable Pirates of the Caribbean partnership with Rango, an animated movie about a lizard who has stumbled into the Mojave. Rango is a rube, unfamiliar with the hardships of desert life, and he’s told as much by three birds in a mariachi band and a Spanish-accented blob of an animal much better at camouflaging himself than silly Rango. Proving his lack of desert savvy, Rango runs into a cactus and gets chased around by a bird — and then the trailer gets really trippy. There are animals in saloons wearing fedoras and mustaches, smiley faces, snakes with really big hats, and that surreal windup fish toy from the teaser trailer, all flashing by to the sounds of Zorro’s soundtrack. Rango wears a Hawaiian shirt and stares at you with huge eyes in the shape of aviator sunglasses throughout — as if Hunter S. Thompson embodied by Johnny Depp got embodied by an animated lizard. Bring your kids or your stoner friends!
