Way back in 1990, when I was still in grade school and "Duck Tales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp" was theatrically released, I assumed that all the Disney Afternoon cartoon series would get the feature treatment eventually. Alas, aside from the rare "A Goofy Movie" or "Doug's 1st Movie," this was not the case. So color me surprised that thirty years later, "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" finally got their feature film, recently released on Disney+. I was not prepared.
First, if there are any earnest "Rescue Rangers" fans still out there, this may not be the film for you. The new movie is a meta story that imagines that animated chipmunks Chip (John Mulaney) and Dale (Adam Samberg) are actors in a "Roger Rabbit" style Hollywood, where cartoons and live action people coexist. "Rescue Rangers," the show we watched as kids, was the big TV hit that brought them to stardom before egoes and miscommunications broke the pair up. Now, thirty years later, Dale is still chasing fame and Chip works in insurance when a series of cartoon disappearances prompt a reunion and teamup. A human LAPD officer (Kiki Layne) thinks the duo can help solve the mystery. Directed by Akiva Schaffer of Lonely Island and "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping" fame, this is a Hollywood satire on stardom that often feels like it's shoehorning the Disney chipmunks into a familiar "True Hollywood Story" tell-all template.
While there's nothing in "Rescue Rangers" that isn't kid appropriate, the tone here is so cynical and un-Disney. The movie is aimed at the current generation of kids as much as the older Millennials and young Gen-Xers who remember watching "Rescue Rangers" as small children, and then lived through the early, awkward years of the CGI animation Renaissance, including the experiments in mo-cap and photorealistic animation that have aged super badly. As a result, the updated Toontown is now populated by both 2D and 3D characters, including toons from non-Disney properties like "Shrek," "Beowulf," Netflix's "Big Mouth," "South Park," and even a couple of leftover "Cats" extras. We also finally get to visit the actual Uncanny Valley, home of those unfortunate mo-cap animated creatures with dead "Polar Express" eyes. Easily the best cameo is "Ugly Sonic," the original "Sonic the Hedgehog" character design so soundly rejected by the internet, now voiced by Tim Robinson.
What's even more jarring is Chip and Dale themselves, who are now essentially John Mulaney and Adam Sandler in animated form - Chip in 2D and Dale in 3D because he got a procedure done. The two banter and bicker like typical Dreamworks characters rather than Disney characters, trying a little too hard to sound cool and smart and pop-culture savvy. They're totally different from any other incarnation of Chip 'n Dale that has ever existed before, and it took me nearly half of film's running time to sort-of get used to it. The humor, likewise, is far more Lonely Island than Mickey Mouse. There's a constant stream of self-referential jokes, and digs at current blockbuster trends, from Dale constantly angling for a "Rescue Rangers" reboot to glimpses of a "Batman v. E.T." project. The crime story part of "Rescue Rangers" is also a few degrees skeevier than I was expecting. The kidnappings turn out to be part of a toon trafficking plot, where the victims get their mouths erased and their bodies hastily redrawn, before they're shipped off and forced to star in cheap mockbusters in the tradition of "The Little Panda Fighter" and "Ratatoing."
As for the execution, the results are mixed. This is a very ugly looking film, and while I like that it leans into the oddity of certain characters like Ugly Sonic and the villain Sweet Pete (Will Arnett), there's a dreadful lack of visual consistency necessary to make us believe that all of these characters exist in the same universe. The animation is cheap and it shows, not remotely in the same league as "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" That said, some of the gags and jokes are clever, and I'm impressed that the creators took aim at certain trends in animation that nobody else really talks about, and weren't afraid to skew more adult. And who but Disney would have the licensing clout and the resources to even attempt something like this?
"Rescue Rangers" fans do get a few concessions to nostalgia. It's good to hear Tress MacNeill as Gadget again (though I don't know why they got Eric Bana to voice Monteray Jack when they had Jim Cummings voicing half a dozen other characters). We get our updated version of the theme song, sung by Post Malone. There's shameless hinting about a "Darkwing Duck" reboot coming next. However, I have to point out that Lonely Island could have made this film with the characters from any other '80s cartoon, like "He-man" or "Alvin and the Chipmunks" - both of them already rebooted. "Rescue Rangers" just happened to be available, and nobody else was doing anything with the property. Because who the heck, aside from a content hungry Disney+, wants a "Rescue Rangers" reboot anyway?
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