Rango

Ogres are like onions, but Rango is parfait. Everybody likes parfait.
Ok, actually, Rango may not be for everybody. Common Sense Media points out that Rango is intended to entertain rather than educate. They also note, accurately, that there is more violence, smoking and swearing in
Rango than in most children's movies. They rate it ON for age 9 and up. Normally, these things would all send me ducking for cover. But I love Rango. Wonder Red loves Rango. Princess Pea loves Rango.
Yes, Rattlesnake Jake is scary. Yes, characters die and nearly die. And yes, one character does have an arrow in his head. But it's not creepy, it's funny. I'm sorry I can't find a picture of him.
And parfait has so many yummy layers. Chase scenes on top of dry wit on top of existential dilemmas on top of mad movie referencing on top of witty reparte on top of cowboy movies. With a Johnny Depp cherry on top.

Ok, pretty scary.

• I've never seen so many chase scenes in one movie before, and none of them felt gratuitous. Music in some of them reminded me, with no little nostalgia, of that other desert classic, Raising Arizona. In one of them, I thought Princess Pea was getting scared, because she kept saying, "oooh ooh ooh" as a giant rock tipped over and fell towards our fearful hero. Then it landed and she shouted, "Crash!" and I knew everything was going to be okay.
• Maybe my childhood on the Mojave desert has made me inclined to a certain gallows humor that would generally be frowned on in parental circles, but I nearly bust a gut when the hero's theme music (mariachi owls) declare, "But the lizard, he's going to die," repeatedly throughout the movie. And the heroine is named Beans. 
• Essentially, the movie is about figuring out who you want to be. Rango says, "I could be anybody," but in the isolation of his terrarium, doesn't know who he should be. It is only when faced with real life problems and relationships that he discovers what is needed, and learns the hard way to "Fake it till you make it." And he proves that you don't have to be cool to be a hero.
• Rango holds his fingers up in front of him when he discovers mud in the desert, and suddenly Depp shifts into Jack Sparrow's voice, "That's interesting." Two X-wings, I mean, bats, collide in midair in a familiar battle scene. Of course, the movie is practically a remake of some old Westerns, with references both subtle and overt to the Man With No Name. It's a Wonderful Life, The Hills Have Eyes - really, there were not just too many to name, there were too many to keep up with. I love that.
• The dialogue is quicker and more colorful than anything I've since The Thin Man. Bean's father had an inordinate fondness for legumes. Rango enjoys "a hearty puttanesca myself, but I'm not sure that the child would appreciate the moniker."
• The Man With No Name has already been mentioned, but the old Western format of the movie, while responsible for the reprehensible ubiquitous firearms, made this movie a charmer for me. I loved watching the old formulas reworked with crusty desert animals. Rattlesnake Jake was pushing the scariness envelope. But while The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or even Shane, are going to be off limits to my kids for years to come, Rango lets me introduce them to the stories of my childhood in a less enlightened day, when violence was inevitable in a good story and "floozy" wasn't on the list of bad words.
• Did I mention Johnny Depp? Even when he's an animated lizard with a pot belly, that man is dead sexay.