Rango (2011)

Nominated for Best Animated Film  I will own this movie.  It was adorable.

If you had asked me before what I thought about an animated spaghetti western involving desert animals, I would have wondered how much peyote you'd been smoking.  It works, though.  I think probably because the animals don't look very soft and cuddly.  I mean, look at that poster.  If you saw any one of those things inside your house, you wouldn't think twice about beating it to death with a fireplace poker.

There's a whole list of voice talent from Johnny Depp and Isla Fisher to Abigail Breslin, Bill Nighy, and Alfred Molina.

I know it's animated and it's done by Nickelodeon Studios, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to the under-7 crowd.  There are a few jokes clearly intended for adults (which are hilarious) and the theme is fairly dark.

Rango is a chameleon whose tank is bounced out of the back of his owners' hatchback on a desert highway as they try and avoid an armadillo in the road.  Rango talks to the run-over armadillo and finds that he is on a quest to "cross over to the other side" in order to find The Spirit of the West.  Already dehydrated, Rango is in search of water and is told there is a town a day's journey away.  The landscape animation is really beautiful, as are his fevered dreams.  He finds the town of Dirt on its last legs after their water supply has mysteriously dwindled and is able to successfully reinvent himself as a great western hero by killing the hawk that has been plaguing the town.  The mayor appoints him Sheriff and assigns him the job of finding out what's happened to the water.

As an adult, I found the main villain to be no surprise whatsoever, but then, I've seen Chinatown.  What's fun, though, is just how many bad guys there are.  There's the mayor's gang of henchmen (led by Ray Winstone's gila monster), a Hills Have Eyes-amount of creepy mole bank robbers, the hawk, and a rattlesnake with a gatling gun for a rattle.

This is one of those rare movies that really does have something to please everybody.  Kids will like it because it's animated, adults will like it because it's clever, and Western fans will like it for all the movie homages.