Rango: Press reviews

'Think Pixar on LSD flavoured with Shakespearean wit and a dash of Fear and Loathing delirium and you're almost there'

'it is not self-conscious knowingness that drives "Rango" but rather a quirky and sincere enthusiasm for all the strange stuff that has piled up in the filmmakers' heads over the years'

'The movie has the eccentric, homage-filled tang of classic Westerns, as well as a wonderful score by Hans Zimmer that sounds like Ennio Morricone fused with Looney Tunes. Though young children may enjoy it, the film is built for viewers of any age with a taste for joyful anarchy'

'Depp is in prodigious vocal form – Hunter S. Thompson meets Jack Sparrow meets Kermit the Frog – and the digital detailing, especially on Rango, (bulging frazzled eyes, fine-tuned twitches and gulps), is a joy'

'The dry desert heat is almost palpable, the sun-bleached landscapes often beautiful and the characters uncannily expressive and lifelike. It's like Looney Tunes on mescalin'

'The first 20 minutes of this are among the funniest and most brilliant of any animated movie I've seen. Johnny Depp voices, superbly, a hapless bulging-eyed chameleon named Rango who stumbles upon authority after lying – with his forked tongue – about an heroic past as a gunslinger.'

'Gore Verbinski has created a truly left field, oddball, hilarious film that again, like Toy Story 3, proves animation is today's most exciting cinema form.4

'As animation, this is top class, and a mile away from the orthodox. Some of the detail is terrific, and the screenplay is sharply intelligent. But for the fact that it all goes on too long, Rango is better than most real-life Hollywood comedies.'

'Rather than adopting the shiny, happy colour scheme used in Pixar and DreamWorks cartoons, the film has the harsh, dusty look of a live-action Western, while its mottled and scaly characters are so grotesque that they could have been sketched by Depp's pal Terry Gilliam.'

'‘Rango' would have worked well as a ripping, family-friendly tale packed with incident and humour; in trying to be too clever, it risks alienating its audience'

'The strangeness is off the scale in a kooky concoction that might have been hatched at the bottom of a bong. Then again, what do you expect with Johnny involved?'

'An animated spoof western packed full of in-jokes that will sail over the heads of most children and anyone who isn't familiar with such child-unfriendly films as Chinatown, A Fistful Of Dollars and Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.'