The Facts:
Synopsis: Thirty years after their popular television show ended, chipmunks Chip and Dale live very different lives. When a cast member from the original series mysteriously disappears, the pair must reunite to save their friend.
Stars: John Mulaney, Andy Samberg, Will Arnett, Eric Bana, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, J.K. Simmons, KiKi Layne, Flula Borg, Dennis Haysbert
Director: Akiva Schaffer
Rated: PG
Running Length: 97 minutes
TMMM Score: (8/10)
Review: It’s hard to believe it now, but the original run of Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers on The Disney Channel was just three “seasons” that ran a little over a year, starting in 1989. That was prime time for me, and I vividly recall that whole cartoon programming block on the popular premium channel. Once it entered syndication, it would often air with DuckTales (another favorite) and TaleSpin (take it or leave it), but with the two chipmunks long being a favorite of mine since tiny tyke-hood, I was hooked on everything Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers was serving up. As Disney+ enters its newest evolution in reexamining its content library, there’s been a trend in remaking or rebooting to varying degrees of success.
This past Christmas, a low-down dirty shame of a movie came out called Home Sweet Home Alone. Daring to advertise itself with the tagline “Holiday Classics Were Meant to Be Broken” and break them, they sure did. A travesty of a reboot (or continuation, it was never clear), it was a dismal mess and didn’t bode well for any future project that might be coming down the pike. You’d imagine the blood draining out of my face when I saw the poster directly above this review for Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers. “It’s not a reboot, it’s a comeback.” Here they go again with a clever tagline that kicked up some dirt at reboots while jockeying for a place on a higher bar. Disney was setting itself up for the same failure as before, right?
Initially, I was going to put on Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers for background noise in my hotel room during an out-of-town work trip. It wasn’t one I was totally duty-bound to review, so… what’s the harm in just having it playing on the side? Then something strange happened. The film began, and I started laughing at jokes that I would never have understood fully as a kid, but I completely LOL-ed at them because they were specifically targeted at adults that were kids at the time the original series was released. Writers Dan Gregor (Dolittle) and Doug Mand appear to have been given carte blanche to give a highly detailed take on an animated children’s show and turn it into an Easter Egg hunt for big kids that now have a mortgage to pay.
The world of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is similar to the Toon Town of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, with animated and live-action characters interacting normally. Cartoons are filmed like regular movies, and if you have the right amount of money, hand-drawn animated figures can “upgrade” themselves to computer-generated versions in order to stay relevant in the looks-obsessed society of today. Before we get to the present, we look back at the past with Dale’s (Andy Samberg, Palm Springs) voiceover telling the origin story of how he met Chip (John Mulaney, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) in grade school when both were social outcasts. Teaming up to become a comedy duo, they took their act to Hollywood, where they eventually landed a plum gig on, what else, Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers. When Dale gets tired of playing the silly second banana to Chip, he makes a play for solo fame but loses both of their careers in doing so.
Thirty years later, someone has been stealing famous cartoon characters and selling them to the black market as digitally altered bootlegs. When old castmate Monterey Jack (Eric Bana, The Finest Hours) vanishes after reuniting the two former friends, the odd couple will need to put aside their past differences and use their fictitious crime-solving techniques in a real-world setting. Working with a disgraced detective (KiKi Layne, If Beale Street Could Talk) to elude an underbelly of criminal older toons (one that “won’t grow up” sure did) while trying to locate their friend, the duo meets up with familiar faces from their glory days as well as blink-and-you missed-them famous cartoons that will consistently surprise you.
This rollicking plot bursting with creativity at every turn is great news for long-time fans like me who leave the 97-minute film with a boost but might be problematic for parents trying to introduce their kids to their chipmunk chums from yesteryear. There are far too many “inside baseball” jokes that won’t resonate with children that don’t remember waiting a whole week for the next episode of a show that you couldn’t start over again immediately. Chock full of connections to many early ’90s cultural touchstones which brought me glee, I couldn’t help but wonder what an oddity this would feel like to someone with no frame of reference.
Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a fun ride, engineered for an audience mature enough to get the rapid-fire nostalgia-rich jokes but not too mature to avoid taking a chance on a reboot, sorry, a comeback of Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers in the first place. The solid, sensible voice work from Mulaney and Samberg gives the furry stars the type of personalities you might have anticipated them having were they to have offscreen personas. Finally, director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) stays mindful of plot and pacing, never letting the comedic action linger too long in one place. Far better than you’d expect and one I’m more than open to revisiting, Chip’ n Dale: Rescue Rangers isn’t one to let slip through the cracks.
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