Gore Verbinski created the Budweiser frogs ad campaign; his debut feature, "Mouse Hunt," was like a live-action "Tom and Jerry" episode; and there's an unmistakably cartoonish quality to the three "Pirates of the Caribbean" flicks he directed. So it's not surprising that Verbinski would now make a full-length animated movie.

What is surprising is how much it mimics the experience of watching a classic Hollywood film. Without double-crossing the kiddie contingent, "Rango" is iconic like a spaghetti Western, smart like a '70s conspiracy thriller and lively like a Coen brothers comedy.

The latter quality comes partly from the Coens' cinematographer, Roger Deakins, who advised Verbinski on the look and lighting of the project. The team has created a feverishly detailed desert oasis, the town of Dirt, where a stranger arrives one dusty day. A lanky chameleon (voice of Johnny Depp) brags to townsfolk like the feisty belle Beans (Isla Fisher) that he's a gunslinger named Rango, but he's really a city slicker, a Hollywood house pet who fell onto the freeway during a moving-day mishap.

An old turtle who is the town's mayor (Ned Beatty) enlists Rango to be the new sheriff. His job is to protect the ratty inhabitants and their dwindling water supply from the bandits led by Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy). But, as in "Chinatown," larger and darker forces are slithering across the valley.

"Rango" is packed with pop-culture allusions, from Eastwood and Tarantino movies to the discarded consumer junk from which the town is built. But while it's dryly funny enough for hipsters, it's got hues that should attract an all-ages audience: romance, rollicking adventure and a timeless tale of heroism (underscored by a mariachi band of owls that functions like a Greek chorus).

In reconstructing a classic Western on a chameleon's scale, Verbinski has given us horseplay of a different color.

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What "Rango" • Three and half stars (out of four) • Rating PG • Run time 1:47 • Content Some rude humor