Anthony's Film Review - Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

This movie brings back an old Disney TV cartoon, with a lot of amusing jokes mixed in...

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers was a Disney television cartoon series that aired for three seasons from 1988 to 1990. It featured Chip and Dale, two chipmunks who had been seen in plenty of old Disney animated shorts, as members of a crime-fighting squad alongside three other characters: the cheese-loving mouse Monterey Jack, the technical whiz mouse Gadget, and a fly named Zipper. In each episode, the gang finds itself in all sorts of adventures, often crossing paths with Fat Cat, one of their main nemeses. This was a popular show on the TV scheduling block known as Disney Afternoon.

That said, this is not a review of that old TV cartoon. This is my review of the 2022 reboot/sequel of the same name released for streaming on Disney+. It's a reboot because it reimagines the title characters in a different medium, not simply keep them entirely in traditional two-dimensional animation. But it's also a sequel because it acknowledges the existence of the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers TV show. It's interesting how this movie reflects the ways animation has changed. If you watch the Chip 'n Dale television show, it's trademark Disney 2D animation. But if you suddenly switch to this movie, you have a mix of 2D, 3D, and live action, along with the style of subtle crude humor and pop culture references that has dominated animation since the release of Shrek.

You see, this movie takes the same live-action/animation approach as the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It is set in our familiar live-action world, but live-action human characters coexist harmoniously with all sorts of animated characters in all walks of life. It is in this context that the movie presents Chip and Dale, voiced respectively by John Mulaney and Andy Samberg, as two chipmunk actors who had starred on the Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers show. It is now three decades since that show ended. Chip is now working as an insurance agent, while Dale is trying to bring back the glory days of the Rescue Rangers show. In fact, Dale has undergone CGI surgery, the animation equivalent of plastic surgery, to turn himself into a 3D-animated character. As for the other three Rescue Rangers characters, Monterey Jack is still around and is still addicted to cheese, whereas Gadget and Zipper have gotten together and started a family with many half-fly half-mouse offspring. (Weird, I know, but if Donkey and the dragon from the Shrek movies could have half-donkey half-dragon kids, why not?)

The story centers on a missing persons case. The police are investigating the kidnapping of Monterey Jack, and Chip and Dale are first contacted because they had last been in contact with him. The two chipmunk actors are soon reprising their Rescue Rangers roles for real. Their investigation leads to a crime boss named Sweet Pete, who is in fact a disgruntled grown-up Peter Pan. (Does this mean that this movie is also a satirical sequel to Disney's 1953 animated film Peter Pan?) Sweet Pete runs a massive bootlegging operation, where animated characters are altered into cheap imitations of their former selves, then forced into being filmed for bootleg versions of popular movies and TV shows that are sold around the world. The idea of it is funny while being intriguing in the context of a cartoon world.

The fun of watching this movie comes mainly from humor. There are funny things that happen as Chip and Dale are trying to pinpoint the whereabouts of their missing friend Monterey Jack. More importantly, this movie is full of funny pop culture references. Some are related to Disney properties, like Beauty and the Beast's Lumiere at a fan convention, Baloo performing a jazz rendition of "Bare Necessities," the appearances of Scrooge McDuck and Darkwing Duck, a bootlegged version of The Simpsons, and a parody of one specific Marvel Studios superhero movie. Don't forget the citations of specific episodes of the old Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers show. Even funnier are the jokes about various non-Disney animated properties. For example, be on the lookout for references to Voltron, Snoopy, Looney Tunes, He-Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, and even (I kid you not) Beavis and Butt-Head along with South Park.

Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers is a fun movie because it has something for everyone. The story of two chipmunk sleuths is amusing to follow. For anyone who loved the old Chip 'n Dale show on TV, this is a fun new adventure, even if it transports characters from old Disney animated media to the new animated media that has largely been shaped by animation studios competing with Disney over the years. And if you want to disregard the plot but still enjoy a cinematic easter egg hunt, you've got plenty of things to spot in this movie. Overall, while this movie takes an approach that is sillier than what you might expect, it embraces and acknowledges recent trends in animation so that old animated characters can be appreciated even in a world that has changed.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, visit the Internet Movie Database.