The Lone Ranger (12A)

You know, I've been to the cinema a lot over the years, and I've thought a lot of things - Where have all the staff gone? Why do people eat crunchy snacks? What's that sticking to my foot? You know, normal thoughts.

But I have never wandered into a darkened screen and thought 'what a great place to leave my two young boys unattended for three hours'. It's a cinema, where people have better things to do than keep an eye on your offspring, it's not a creche.

Now, to be fair to the little scamps, once The Lone Ranger started all the bouncing about, kicking of railings and chattering stopped and they became engrossed. Which was great. Still say there should have been an adult knocking about somewhere though.

As for the film itself, it's had a stormy few weeks since being released in the States. Sniffy critics have taken turns to lay into the re-imagining of the 1950s TV classic, causing star (and producer) Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski to blame the critics for the film's poor performance.

Which is unfair. Film fans don't hang on the words of the critics. They watch trailers and talk to friends. If critics held that much sway, the Fast And Furious franchise would have come to a halt after the first film. Same with the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise. No, you can't blame the critics.

The problem, sadly, is I think people just didn't get it.

There's also the possibility that people don't have the same warm nostalgia for the masked bringer of justice that Depp and Verbinski do.

Which is a shame, because behind all the quirk and odd storytelling lies a fine homage to classic westerns, with heart, violence, drama, warmth, humour, tension and a man with a bird on his head. What's not to like?

The story starts in 1930s San Francisco, as a young man pays his nickle and wanders into the tent promising to recreate the Wild West. Look, a stuffed buffalo, look a stuffed bear, look a geriatric Tonto...

From here, having overcome his shock at discovering the Wild Savage was in fact alive, our young boy - resplendent in his Lone Ranger get-up - listens in awe as Tonto tells the tail of how good, honest John Reid (played by Armie Hammer) became The Lone Ranger. And it kind of works.

Kind of.

The boy is able to ask the questions the audience have, but I'm not sure we need to keep cutting back to the 1930s to carry on telling the story we're watching unfold. It's not annoying, don't get me wrong - and I enjoyed the to-ing and fro-ing - but I can see it annoying the less quirk-friendly folk.

Depp's performance itself is fine. Unusually underplayed for him, and wonderfully deadpan, it could be that a lot of people haven't got the humour at play here - and there's a lot of it. Tonto is flush with one-liners and wry looks, and Depp's comic timing has never been in question. But it is VERY deadpan. There's no sitcom-style trumpeting of an upcoming punchline here.

Which is good, because that would set the wrong tone, but you could see people missing the gags.

Especially when there's quite a lot of violence and drama around. No punches are pulled as entire native American tribes are wiped out in the name of progress and greed. Verbinski is quite happy to portray the white man as the evil looter, highlighting the atrocities that were committed back then.

Now it's no mean feat to mix flippant with war, but the film just about pulls it off. Sometimes to the detriment of what could be a dramatic scene, but to be honest by the time the tones start to shift like the desert sands, I was enjoying myself so much I figured it can't be that big a problem.

Others will disagree, I guarantee.

But this is a fun film. The tone of the old Western films is captured perfectly, bleached-out scenes, lingering shots of horse chases, grandiose frames of men walking in the desert, this bit Verbinski nails.

And Hammer's good. With Depp toning it down, there's space for the good man of the law to shine, delivering more deadpan humour well and being a thoroughly believable Good Man.

He's joined on the side of good by Kent's very own Ruth Wilson, who as the sassy Rebecca combines looks with bite. She again more than holds her own, and again doesn't go overboard.

The more cartoonish villains kind of do that, but even William Fitchner's sinister Butch Cavendish isn't TOO overboard. He's evil, he's got scars, but he manages to stop short of being an evil clown.

The star of the film, however,  is the horse. There's no getting around it. Silver acts everyone off the screen, making it the best animal performance since Lassie. Or Frasier's Eddie. He earns his hay, that you can be sure of.

So what are people complaining about?

It's got big set-pieces, explosions, chases on trains, chases on horseback, chasing of trains on horseback, shootings, humour, a bird on Tonto's head - what's not to love about all of this? It's everything a summer blockbuster should be.

OK, the use of old Tonto to tell the story is odd, and there are some weird moments that seem out of place (yes devil rabbits, I'm talking to you), and the tribal spirituality could be a tad less laboured - but against everything else, these are things you should be able to live with.

This film does have points to make about the treatment of the native Americans, and it makes them well, but it doesn't ram them down your throat.

Instead, it sets out to be an old-fashioned Western epic, with big everything, lots of action and a man with a bird on his head.

Ignore the critics (well, not this one, obviously), just go and see it. It's so good it keeps unattended kiddies quiet.