Mark Reviews Movies: CHIP 'N DALE: RESCUE RANGERS

Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Disney+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 19, 2022

Director Akiva Schaffer's Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers isn't an empty foray into nostalgia, aimed at a certain generation who grew up with animated TV show of the same name. It's a foray into nostalgia, to be sure, but the film, written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, has a brain and a heart, too. There's a genuine affection for these characters, even as the filmmakers transform the squeaky-voiced chipmunks into washed-up and disillusioned or oblivious former stars, but the film's sense of appreciation goes deeper than a single cartoon from the late 1980s.

Here, we get a series of amusingly satirical takes on lost fame, the trend toward indulging in fans' nostalgia, cop and detective yarns, and the history of animation styles over the past few decades. The setting is a Los Angeles where humans and cartoon characters live side-by-side in harmony (The appearance of Roger Rabbit, doing his namesake dance at a night club, almost suggests a continuation of the hybrid world from that character's 1988 film).

Our heroes, the chipmunks Chip (voice of John Mulaney, appropriately dry as the traditional straight man of the duo) and Dale (voice of Andy Samberg, likeably goofy and naïve), were long-time friends who became struggling actors. Their big break came with the show named after them, in which the two led a crew to solve mysteries and have adventures. After three seasons, Dale, a bit tired of being the comic relief, tried to set out on his own TV show, and an offended Chip more or less put an end to their friendship. When the show was cancelled, the two and their co-stars went their separate way.

In the present day, a bitter Chip sells insurance, and Dale hangs around at fan conventions, hoping to be noticed and to get a second chance at the fame game. The film is a bit cheeky about its own origins and the general trend—a current strategy of the studio behind this film—of resurrecting old intellectual properties.

Dale, for example, has undergone the animated-character equivalent of cosmetic surgery, medically transforming from a cute, two-dimensional cartoon into a 3-D, computer generated upgrade of his cuteness. After all, it worked for Baloo the bear, who went from beloved side player, to TV star around the same time as Dale, and finally to the computer-animated remake of his original film.

The obvious approach to material such as this, which makes so many direct allusions to other pieces of media and features an untold number of cameos from assorted characters, is to let the references speak for themselves and be the joke. Schaffer and his team are cleverer than that, though, and the humor in this film's setup comes from just how deeply the filmmakers dig to make those references. The reason the approach doesn't come across as desperate or shallow in this case is how well the filmmakers incorporate these figures, references, and distinct styles into the world and the plot.

That plot, by the way, involves the mysterious disappearance of Chip and Dale's co-star Monterey Jack (voice of Eric Bana), whose addiction to cheese has gotten him in trouble with rough-and-tumble gang from the Uncanny Valley. In this premise, we get a number of smart gags, from Detective Putty (voice of J.K. Simmons), a police gumshoe in the form and style of a rip-off Gumby (who literally has to rip things off of his sticky, clay body), to a felt-puppet cheesemonger (voice of Keegan-Michael Key), who keeps the really stinky stuff—the kind that creates cartoon stench lines—in the basement.

As for the Valley, it's populated by early motion-capture characters like Bob (voice of Seth Rogen), a dwarf with vacant eyes that are never looking in quite the right direction (Later, the henchman is confronted by some other sidekicks whose distinctive, collective laugh is quite familiar). The central villain here is an unfortunately aged Peter Pan (voice of Will Arnett), who now abducts cartoon characters, performs animated surgery on them, and tosses them into bootleg productions of more famous pieces of media (a personal favorite: a "dead ghost child" named Jasper).

The story keeps the gags a constant, as part of the narrative or simply in the background, which is filled with too many familiar animated faces to mention. Meanwhile, the plot has Chip and Dale playing real-life detectives, like the ones they portrayed on TV, and getting into all sorts of trouble and adventures, as they did on the television show, along the way.

Their former friendship, initially as dead as their acting careers, gets a gradual boost as the two investigate their way toward Monterey, as well as to other former co-stars Gadget (voice of Tress MacNeille) and a fly named Zipper (Dennis Haysbert provides the jarringly baritone voice of the little insect)—whose own relationship has evolved and, well, created some evolutionary mutations with it. As a fan of the chipmunk pair and a cop who could give the two an official hand, KiKi Layne has the doubly thankless task of both playing the odd human out and performing to a bunch of non-existent characters on the set. She's a charming, energetic sport about it, at least.

The stars here are our mismatched, all-but-forgotten duo, anyway. Even beyond them, though, the real enjoyment of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is in the filmmakers' obvious joy and affection for having a playground of animated characters and history in which to have some warmly satirical fun.

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