Review: Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

While there are so many better films to spend your time on in early summer 2022, the new Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers movie (which arrived on Disney+ May 20) is so indicative of our cinematic age that I cannot let it pass without criticism. It is yet another nostalgia-fuelled revival, a means to not only spin out new content based on old IP, but also to renew the utility of old content, in this case, the Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers TV show that ran 1989–90, with reruns playing throughout the 90s. It goes without saying that the old show is also currently available on Disney+. 

While the movie’s base commercial utility is not hard to discern, Anders raised a good question in a tweet about the trailer back in April: “The brothers were big fans of the cartoon when we were kids, but seriously, who is this for?” It would be justifiable to ask this of pretty much any remake or reboot these days, but especially when we are talking about a children’s cartoon from three decades ago. 

In many ways, however, my family is the target audience. I’m the 30-something parent who remembers the old TV show somewhat fondly. Long before the new movie was announced, I had actually shown my children some of the old episodes. (As a parent, I appreciate how, as with many Disney cartoon shows from that era, the pacing isn’t as hyper and the teleplay writing has some narrative structure and substance, unlike too many kids cartoons today.) 

Nevertheless, after watching the new movie with my family, I think Anders’ question still rings true. Who is this for? But also: what kind of a movie is this?

The movie imagines a world akin to that of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) in which animated characters are living beings who exist alongside regular human people. In the movie, the old Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers TV show is just that, a kids show from the 1990s, in which childhood friends Dale (voiced by Andy Samberg) and Chip (John Mulaney) played the adventuring duo. When Dale attempted a solo career on the side, the show was cancelled and their friendship was fractured. Years later, Chip works in insurance and still harbours resentment against Dale, while Dale works the fan-expo market in the hopes of reigniting his former success. When their toon friend, Monterey Jack (Eric Bana), who played a supporting role on the old show, disappears, the duo must reunite to find him. A noirish detective plot uncovering cartoon “bootleggers” (imagined as criminals somewhere between smut producers and human traffickers) is balanced alongside the friendship plot and Dale’s show business aspirations. 

While Dale’s efforts to reignite the old show align with the movie’s essential purpose, this naked attempt at content (re)generation is packaged alongside some arch yet soft satire and meta-commentary. Is the satire and self-reflexivity meant to deflect criticism of the obvious commercial nature of the project, or is it a reflection of genuine weariness with the current unoriginality of Hollywood? Or, like The Matrix Resurrections, is the film ambivalent? Matt Zoller Seitz, in a 2015 review I perennially return to, described the first Jurassic World movie as “sizing itself up as a consumer product as well as a film,” and this self-reflexive tendency has since become a common trend in reboots and remakes today. In Chip ’n Dale, the showbiz storyline, including Dale’s anxiety about recovering his former success, facilitates most of the meta-commentary and satire. For instance, just as the Indominus Rex in Jurassic World is bigger, louder, and has more teeth, Dale updates himself with 3D CGI enhancement, in a toothless bite at the reliance of Hollywood actors on cosmetic surgery. 

The movie also dispenses with the high-pitched chipmunk voices most of the time, suggesting that they were just fake funny voices Chip and Dale adopted for the old show. Personally, I’d prefer the classic Chip and Dale voices over Samberg’s and Mulaney’s unremarkable voice work. Also, why make updates like this in a throwback movie? 

Chip, at least, is cel-shaded, giving him an appearance more like the traditional 2D animation used in the old show. The same goes for the rest of the old cast, including Montey, Gadget (Tress MacNeille), and Zipper (Dennis Haysbert). Other toon characters are visualized in traditional 2D, some in 3D computer animation, and Police Captain Putty looks like claymation. Voiced by J. K. Simmons, Captain Putty is the highlight of the supporting cast; his lines and mannerisms are consistently funny and his Gumby-like body is exploited for humorous effect. 

The weakest supporting character is probably Seth Rogen’s Bob the Warrior Viking, who is supposed to be a motion-capture fantasy dwarf in the style of Robert Zemeckis’s The Polar Express (2004) and Beowulf (2007). While the very idea of including photorealistic characters altered by CGI in the toon world is intriguing—pointing to the spectrum of animation that cinema has largely become post-CGI—Rogen’s characterization is one-note. There are too many references to the “dead-eyed” CGI of Polar Express, and too many Seth Rogen cackles. I also didn’t like the grown-up and creepy Peter Pan (voiced by Will Arnett), who is more sad and disturbing than funny, and whose humour is clearly pitched at adults rather than children. (Insinuations about the abuse of child actors isn’t something I need in a family movie either.) Unfortunately, Bob the Warrior Viking and Peter Pan aren’t the movie’s only bad choices in terms of characters.

Worst of all is the tag-along real-human rookie detective, Ellie Steckler (played by KiKi Layne), who is given little to do. Although she is awkwardly inserted into the storyline about a third of the way into the movie, she becomes one of the main characters by the end for no good reason. Unlike Bob Hoskins’ private eye, Eddie Valiant, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Ellie does not drive the plot through her detection. In fact, Dale narrates the movie’s opening and is more the focal point of the narrative. Nevertheless, writers Dan Gregor and Doug Mand seem to feel the need to bring in a human character to function as some sort of audience surrogate. Similar to Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), which gave us a fanboy Peter Parker, here Disney also tries to align the audience with fandom: Ellie is bizarrely and unconvincingly a mega-fangirl of the old Rescue Rangers show. No such people exist, and the characterization reeks of desperation. 

Much of the humour, such as jokes about “Chippendales” male strippers, go over kids’ heads, as will the nods back to the nineties. Zoomers might appreciate the work as another faux-nostalgia piece for an era they don’t remember, akin to Strangers Things and its portrayal of the 1980s. My kids thought the movie was a pretty fun Hollywood detective story, but they noticeably haven’t asked to watch it again. 

While Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers is admirably operating on several different levels, it doesn’t succeed on any of them. Unlike the brilliant Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the new Rescue Rangers lacks a solid detective story, and its humour is neither that funny nor cartoonish. There is none of the insane, wild, goofball imagination of classic cartoons, and little of the coherent world-building of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Even the old Bonkers TV show (1993–94) achieved a more thought-out world shared by both toons and humans.

New technology and the logic of content streaming have rendered Disney as a kind of Dr. Frankenstein. At least once a season, the monomaniacal technician attempts to revive the corpse of a dead property, hoping to inject the assembled parts with enough electricity to make them appear alive and whole, even for just a short time, while also budding some new baby clones. I expect that this movie’s corpse will serve its limited purpose, but no more.

4 out of 10

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022, USA)

Directed by Akiva Schaffer; written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand; starring John Mulaney, Andy Samberg, KiKi Layne, Eric Bana, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Tress MacNeille, Dennis Haysbert, and J. K. Simmons.

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