Director Gore Verbinski holds the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film for his work in "Rango" at the 84th Academy Awards in Hollywood, California, February 26, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Hershorn
HOLLYWOOD – The Johnny Depp-voiced “Rango,” an adventure about a colorful chameleon helping a parched desert village to find water, won the best animated feature Oscar on Sunday.
The film beat “Kung Fu Panda 2,” “Puss in Boots,” France’s “A Cat in Paris,” and Spain’s “Chico & Rita.”
The win by the Paramount-produced movie ended a four-year run of triumphs by Pixar films in the animated feature category of the Academy Awards. Last year’s winner was “Toy Story 3.”
“Rango” tells the story of a lonely chameleon who is used to making up stories – playing out scenes with a fellow cast of inanimate objects – and who finds himself stuck in the middle of the desert after a road accident.
He ends up in the parched village of Dirt, whose inhabitants ask him to become their sheriff – after a tour-de-force made-up bar-room scene in which he invents his own backstory and name – to help them find water.