The lizard cometh. No doubt about it, folks, this is the week of Rango and after a couple weeks of releases so weak that the cringeworthy Gnomeo And Juliet continues to hold a spot near the top of the box office while Drive Angry 3D utterly fails to find an audience despite being hugely entertaining there's a lot riding on this one having the right blend of quality and mass appeal to register as a true hit. It does. And it will.

First of all there's the Johnny and Gore factor to consider. Johnny, of course, is Johnny Depp, who voices the titular character and sort of acts him, too. And Gore? That'd be director Gore Verbinski who was at the controls of the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films -- the massive hits that vaulted Depp into the upper stratosphere of stardom. These two have been nothing but box office gold together and the simple fact that they're together again is certain to draw crowds.

And then there's the movie itself -- an oddball animated feature zany enough to keep the kids happy, though clearly written more with their parents in mind. It's a surprisingly off-the-cuff affair that riffs on the likes of Chinatown, a host of spaghetti westerns and even older titles in the Depp catalog like Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. And if your kids are catching those references you probably want to pay a little closer attention to the security of your DVD collection.

Rango is a lizard with an identity problem -- a house-pet chameleon used to adapting himself to whatever his circumstances may be until the day he gets lost. He lands in the desert town of Dirt and decides to simply pick a personality and stick with it regardless of its truthfulness. And the role he chooses to take on is that of fearless gunslinger, a role that lands him the job of town sheriff where he must either live up to his boasting or very likely die trying. And all of this is accomplished to the accompaniment of a band of mariachi owls.

Verbinski approaches his first animated feature like a live action director and for the most part, at least, it pays off large. Turning his back both on motion capture and the traditional method of recording individual voices in isolation, Verbinski brought the entire cast in on stage and had them act things out as a group, allowing them to riff of their ideas vocally and improvise parts of the script as the mood took them. Their physical movements were frequently used as the basis of the animation work later done with their characters. Good choice, this, as he has a fabulous cast of distinctive voices who also happen to be fantastic improvisers and, frankly, there's not a lot of point in putting Depp in something like this and then trying to limit him to words that someone else put on the page. He's at his best when he roams a bit, and Verbinski lets him do that. Also helping to a shocking degree is the very unusual move of bringing in a live action cinematographer -- in this case the nine times Oscar-nominated Roger Deakins -- to act as a visual consultant. How a guy used to working with real light could interact with a bunch of computer techs tasked with creating fake light is a mystery to me but the result is a visual palette that is simply stunning. Every frame is a bona fide work of art. It's so striking that I'll be surprised if this method of working doesn't become standard in the animation world within the next five years.

There are bits that don't work as well, of course. At 107 minutes Rango is significantly longer than most animated films and it struggles to maintain its momentum amongst the many diversions. The ending takes a while. And while you don't want to put Depp on a leash there are definitely times when it helps to rein him in a bit, which doesn't happen here as often as it should. Still, though, this is a film that promises a lot and delivers what it says it will. It could be tightened up, but even when the sprawl becomes a bit of a mess it's still a beautiful, funny and entertaining one.