If the quirky, zany, bumbling charms of Johnny Depp's performances in most everything else he's been in for the past decade are wearing a bit thin, then here's some relief.
His Tonto, in this theme-park-sized adaptation of The Lone Ranger, is actually really quite funny. That's whether he's playing him as we first see him as a wizened old sideshow attraction, in flashbacks that frame the story with echoes of Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man.
Or for the rest of the movie playing the warpainted oddball buddy to that Kemosabe guy. His Tonto is more deranged cosmic mentor than the sidekick of the old television show. And he's fun.
For the first hour of this, Depp certainly justifies the choice to make a film about The Lone Ranger about the other guy. Problem is there's still a long, long way to go on a movie that is all over the place tone-wise - it's goofy Blazing Saddles meets violent Hell on Wheels meets quaint old Gunsmoke - and one that starts and ends at a gallop (no prizes for guessing the music powering the big finale) but which has a big saggy middle. When a horse - not Silver - keels over in the desert heat, that signals the start of the movie's descent into plot quicksand.
That was a problem too with director Verbinski's increasingly bloated Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which made a blockbuster star out of Depp in his role as Captain Jack Sparrow.
