Rango has the best opening for a kids’ flick that I’ve ever seen: a slow-motion CGI car wreck that throws a lonely, captive chameleon (voiced by Johnny Depp) from his shattered terrarium onto the open desert road. The talking corpse of an armadillo (Alfred Molina)—who has tire tracks running through his abdomen—urges Depp, the lizard, to head on out into the desert on a vision quest and “find” himself.

And so he does. On his quest, he comes across the town of Dirt, a drought-plagued town populated by a freakish assortment of animals—think toad prostitutes, blind moles, and a macabre-looking pigeon with an arrow through its eye. Here, through bravado and lies, the chameleon transforms from pet to hero. He becomes Rango, a sheriff-lizard with a cowboy hat, a badge, and a love interest (but, strikingly, no genitals).

Rango doesn’t pander to children. There are jokes about mammograms and thespians (“I thought they were illegal in nine states,” muses one character). A cartoon Hunter S. Thompson has a quick cameo.

The movie also cleverly salutes western-movie stereotypes. “I once coughed up a Dalmatian,” one character remarks while eating beans around a campfire, causing other characters to quickly chime in with swaggering one-ups: “I once coughed up a whole tribe of pygmies” and “I found a human spinal column in my fecal matter once.”

Then there’s a cameo by a Clint Eastwood figure (voiced by Timothy Olyphant) as the Spirit of the West. He’s driving a golf cart full of Oscars.

All of these jokes will fly past the heads of its young audience, but there are the usual plotlines to keep them busy—bad guys, fallen heroes, gunplay, redemption, and Kim Novak eating Pop-Tarts in heaven.