Directed by Gore Verbinski. Voices of Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Abigail Breslin, Ned Beatty, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone PG cert, gen release, 107 min

There's far too much old-movie jokiness in this gorgeously animated adventure from the director of Pirates of the Caribbean, writes DONALD CLARKE

THE KEY battle in contemporary mainstream animation is the one between snark and sincerity. Ever since Shrekopened the pop-culture cabinet, too many films in the genre have substituted knowing references for properly formed jokes and well-honed stories. Who cares if that carp looks just like Martin Scorsese?

An early scene in the beautifully animated, indifferently written Rangoillustrates the dangers of the referential approach. Shortly after the title character, a suburban chameleon, hitherto resident in a poky tank, gets set loose in the desert, we spy two drugged-up men driving their way unsafely towards Las Vegas. It's Hunter S Thompson and his lawyer as represented in Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Johnny Depp played Hunter in that film and voices the hero in Rango. Do you get it? Well, yes. But, so what. Barely a second goes past without some allusion to another famous movie.

Rango, who's always thought himself a hero, ends up in a remote town that looks very like something from a Sergio Leone film. Later, following a re-enactment of the saloon scene from Once Upon a Time in the West, Rangois appointed sheriff and becomes involved in the town's desperate attempts to deal with a dwindling water supply. Ring any bells? A sideways take on Chinatown arrives soon after.

The shame is that Rango has much going for it. Gore Verbinski, who directed Depp in those pirate movies, creates a delicious version of the movie west. One can almost smell the tobacco spit and horse sweat. Whatever else you might say about Rango, you couldn’t argue that it was thrown together.

One is, however, left wondering who the film is aimed at. Younger kids will be bored by its perplexing restaging of (to them) ancient entertainments and, perhaps, a little scared by the surprising levels of violence. Older viewers are unlikely to wholly embrace a project that is, for all its knowingness, still essentially a children’s entertainment.

The temptation to end with something like "forget it Jake, it's Rango" is almost overwhelming, but the film really isn't that bad. It's just not quite good enough.