The film stars Johnny Depp as the voice of Rango, a pet chameleon who ends up in the town of Dirt, an outpost that is in desperate need of a new sheriff.

The cast also features the voices of Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone and Timothy Olyphant.

Rango returns to Dirt and challenges Jake to a duel, a diversion staged by his allies to allow the restoration of the town's water in order to make his resolve clear.

However, the mayor forces Rango to surrender by threatening Beans' life before attempting to drown the duo inside the bank's vault.

The likeness of Benicio del Toro is briefly used to represent his character of Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in a cameo appearance, alongside Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke.

[12] Verbinski said his attempt with Rango was to do a "small" film after the first three large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but that he underestimated how painstaking, time-consuming and expensive animated filmmaking is.

[14] The film contains a number of references to movie Westerns and other films, including The Shakiest Gun in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, Chinatown, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cat Ballou, Raising Arizona, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas;[15] as well as references to earlier ILM work including the dogfight in the Death Star trench in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

[20] It depicted an open desert highway and Mr. Timms, Rango's orange, wind-up plastic fish floating slowly across the road.

[26][27] The release had been produced as a two-disc Blu-ray, DVD, and "Digital Copy" combo pack with both the theatrical and an extended version of the film, cast and crew commentary, deleted scenes, and featurettes.

[31] In the United States and Canada, Rango debuted in 3,917 theaters, grossing $9,608,091 on its first day and $38,079,323 during its opening weekend, ranking number one at the box office.

[1] Even though the film dropped into second place behind Battle: Los Angeles the following week, it would go on to outgross the weaker opening of Disney's animated flop, Mars Needs Moms.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Rango is a smart, giddily creative burst of beautifully animated entertainment, and Johnny Depp gives a colorful vocal performance as a household pet in an unfamiliar world.

"[4] Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, noting the nervous but improvising hero's resemblance to the Don Knotts character in The Shakiest Gun in the West, echoed this, saying that "with healthy doses of Carlos Castaneda, Sergio Leone, Chuck Jones and Chinatown ... this [is] the kid-movie equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino picture.

The movie respects the tradition of painstakingly drawn animated classics, and does interesting things with space and perspective with its wild action sequences.

"[46] After praising "the brilliance of its visuals", Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The narrative isn't really dramatic, ... [but] more like a succession of picturesque notions that might have flowed from DreamWorks or Pixar while their story departments were out to lunch.

"[47] In one of the more negative reviews, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune acknowledged its "considerable care and craft" but called it "completely soulless" and that watching it "with a big suburban preview audience was instructive.

[57][58] Non-original music includes "Finale", composed by Danny Elfman for the 2007 film The Kingdom, as well as excerpts of Richard Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries", Johann Strauss II's "The Blue Danube", and Hank Williams cover of "Cool Water".