- Spoiler:
- An unnamed pet chameleon (Johnny Depp), whose only friends are some toys and a dead cricket, becomes accidentally stranded in the Nevada desert. After meeting an armadillo (Alfred Molina) who is seeking the mystical Spirit of the West, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a hawk. The next day, after having a surreal nightmare, he meets the lizard Beans (Isla Fisher), a rancher's daughter, who takes him to Dirt, a tiny, Old West town populated by desert animals.
While Beans discovers that the water reserves, stored in a water-cooler bottle in the bank, are dangerously low, the chameleon, using bravado and acting skills to fit in, presents himself as Rango, a tough drifter. He quickly runs afoul of the outlaw Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), and narrowly avoids a shootout when the hawk returns, scaring Bill and his partners off. A panicky Rango is chased by the hungry hawk until by pure luck he kills the predator by crushing it under an empty water tower he's accidentally caused to collapse. In response, Mayor Tortoise John (Ned Beatty) appoints Rango the new sheriff. A skeptical Beans demands that Rango investigate the water problem while the townsfolk fret that the hawk was the only thing keeping the gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake from returning to terrorize them.
That night, Rango inadvertently gives some mole robbers the location of the bank and tools to get into the vault. When the townsfolk find their water has been stolen. Rango organizes a posse that finds the body of bank manager Merrimack (Stephen Root), mysteriously drowned in the desert. They eventually track down the robbers in their mountain hideout, only for their leader, Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton), to reveal that his clan of moles, prairie dogs and others greatly outnumbers the posse. Nabbing the covered wagon water-bottle, the posse flees, chased in a large ground and air fight before discovering the bottle is empty. Despite the robbers professing that they'd discovered it empty, the posse takes them back to town for trial, perplexed as to who stole the water.
After Rango and Beans deduce that the Mayor has been buying all the land around town, Rango recalls the mayor telling him how controlling water equals control of everything. He confronts the mayor, who denies he has done anything wrong and shows Rango that he is building a modern city on the old land. With no proof of the mayor's wrongdoing, Rango leaves, while the mayor orders one of his men to call Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) — who soon arrives, firing shots with his gatling gun tail, and recognizing that Rango is a fake. Jake runs him out of town after humiliating him and making him admit that everything he told the town about himself is a lie.
Ashamed and no longer knowing who he is, Rango wanders the desert, finds his old friends (the toys) and in a daze meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant), a cowboy whom Rango identifies as the Man with No Name. The Spirit inspires Rango and tells him, "No man can walk out on his own story." With the aid of the armadillo and mystical moving cacti, Rango learns the source of Dirt's water is Las Vegas, and that someone has shut off the valve on a water line. Realizing the mayor's hand in this, Rango recruits the hill clan in his plan.
Returning to town, he calls out Jake for a duel — a diversion so that the hill folk and the cacti can flood the town with water, with a geyser sending Jake into the air. The mayor threatens Beans' life, forcing Rango to surrender. The two are put into the water tank to drown, in which they kiss, while the mayor prepares to shoot Jake using Rango's gun, telling him that the old western times are over and that Jake will be forgotten just like Rango. The trapped Beans and Rango use a bullet to break the tank, flooding the room and taking out the mayor and his men. Jake prepares to attack Rango and Beans but sees the one bullet laying in the wet sand saying "one bullet" remembering that Rango said he would end this whole ordeal with one bullet. Acknowleging that Rango is a worthy opponent, he then grabs Mayor Turtle John and drags him into the desert to take his revenge. Rango, Beans and the other citizens of Dirt celebrate the return of the water. Throughout the film, an owl mariachi band provides commentary that breaks the fourth wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQjJEYTiga0