The new Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie from Disney, which is a feature-length, hybrid live-action / animation film directed by Akiva Schaffer, is the ideal embodiment of everything that is beautiful and bad about the present era of reboots in Hollywood.
Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers makes the mistake of forgetting, in its frantic attempt to light up the warm, fuzzy nostalgia centres of your brain, that callbacks to the good old days really aren’t enough to make these sorts of big-screen reimaginings work.
Chip and Dale: Rescue Rangers is in theatres now. However, the fact that a significant portion of the film’s humour seems to be an attempt by Disney to make fun of itself in ways that aren’t quite successful is what makes watching the film such an unusual experience overall.
The live-action Chip ‘n Dale movie tells the story of how its titular pair of chipmunks first met as children and went on to become celebrities.
It is set in a world where the Rescue Rangers cartoon from the late 1980s was one of the first TV gigs Chip (John Mulaney) and Dale (Andy Samberg) landed. Mulaney and Samberg play the roles of Chip and Dale, respectively.
Chip and Dale become good friends despite the fact that they are the only two cartoon chipmunks in a school full of larger cartoon animals and human students. Their mutual love of comedy eventually leads to them becoming a somewhat successful team of entertainers. After Rescue Rangers was cancelled, the chipmunks’ lives went in different directions. Chip finally chose a career in insurance sales, whilst Dale remained in Hollywood to try to make it big in the entertainment industry.
After a period of time during which they had no contact with one another, the chipmunks are brought back together when it is revealed that one of their fellow original Rescue Rangers castmates has vanished. This is a disappearance that may be related to the recent spate of “bootleggings” that have been plaguing Hollywood.
In the past, Disney has made movies like “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” which satirically recognised the studio’s position as a cultural and economic giant. This is not the first time Disney has gone meta.
However, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand’s script for Chip ‘n Dale feels very much like a snapshot of this current moment in the entertainment industry, which is one in which entertainment giants are encouraging audiences to view their entire IP catalogues as interconnected universes and movies as opportunities for crossovers.
There is a certain amount of allure to the concept of well-known Disney characters, such as Flounder from “The Little Mermaid,” living their lives as washed-up has-beens and evading bill collectors.
However, the aftertaste of each of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers’ self-deprecating jokes is unmistakably that of a multinational corporation trying to get in on jokes about itself that just don’t work because they’re coming out of the mouths of Disney characters. These jokes just don’t work because they’re coming from Disney characters.
Chip ‘n Dale, inadvertently, ends up illustrating just how powerful a company like Disney is and how easily that power can lead to overblown nostalgia grabs that play like ominous signs of metaverses to come. This is because Chip ‘n Dale makes fun of itself, which in turn ends up illustrating just how powerful a company like Disney is.
In many different senses of the word, Chip ‘n Dale’s visual presentation might be described as a “mixed bag.” Chip, along with the majority of the movie’s cartoon characters, continues to be rendered in 2D using cell shading, in contrast to Dale, who chooses to have CGI “surgery” in order to maintain his marketability.
When presented as an ongoing sight gag about the dynamics of Chip and Dale’s world, the characters’ varying aesthetic styles generally work well. However, in visually complicated moments when characters interact, their styles sometimes clash to the point where they break the illusion that is necessary for the movie to make sense.
Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers has the feeling of a plot that isn’t completely sure what it wants to be, which is a problem common to many reboots that seek to appeal to various generations of fans as well as newbies.
The central storyline, which features Chip and Dale in a relationship with the detective Ellie Whitfield (played by Kiki Layne), has the air of being designed to serve as an entry point for new viewers. However, the film also makes an effort to devote a significant amount of screen time to the three other original Rescue Rangers: Gadget (Tress MacNeille), Zipper (Dennis Haysbert), and Monterey Jack (Eric Bana).
Chip ‘n Dale’s surprisingly long list of cameos and jabs at cartoons from beyond Disney’s walled garden feel like unnecessary adornments cluttering what might otherwise have been a perfectly solid welcoming back of its main characters. This would all be fine if it weren’t for the way that Chip ‘n Dale’s surprisingly long list of cameos and jabs at cartoons from beyond Disney’s walled garden feel like unnecessary adornments cluttering
On May 20th, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers will be available to stream on Disney Plus.
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