A staple of the 1990s Disney Afternoon lineup, the original Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers program ran for three seasons, in which Disney’s chipmunk duo got into a variety of crime-solving shenanigans. Formulaic but beloved by its pint-sized audience, it’s probably no surprise that Disney slated it for a streaming reboot.
But rather than a straight-to-series rehash, Disney enlisted writers Doug Mand and Dan Gregor, who cut their teeth on How I Met Your Mother and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Lonely Island alum and director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, Hot Rod) to apparently do whatever they wanted, resulting in one of the funniest and strangest movies currently available on Disney +.
It takes less than two minutes for Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers to make the requisite Chippendales joke, and even less time to toss out a Thomas Chippendale reference, quickly establishing that this is something much more subversive and silly than the typical rehash.
A sort-of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988) for a new generation, Rescue Rangers takes place in a live-action world where humans and cartoons (and Muppets) co-exist. Chip (John Mulaney) and Dale (Andy Samberg) were school friends whose chemistry propelled them to Hollywood stardom and their own comedy series, which ended when Dale set off to find fame on his own. Today, Dale is desperately trying to hang onto his 15 minutes of fame by showing up at conventions and updating his Instagram. Chip, meanwhile, sells insurance and lives in a small house with a big dog. When an old co-star goes missing, the duo reluctantly reteams to crack the case.
The film and its gags about Hollywood culture and multiple innuendos will sail right over the heads of the children hoping for a silly cartoon adventure. Instead, it’s aimed directly at now-grown 1990s kids who grew up eagerly anticipating the Disney Afternoon, packed with subtle and not-so-subtle callouts to various cartoons and movies. There are the obvious Disney appearances, but also several gags involving non-Disney intellectual property — including a very funny running gag about an early animated version of a certain video game mascot turned movie star — that must have caused months-long headaches for the Mouse House’s lawyers.
The film benefits from the comedic sensibilities of its screenwriters, as well as Schaffer and Samberg’s Lonely Island background. Popstar is one of the funniest films of the last decade, and this shares that movie’s willingness to go for every available joke, no matter how surreal or stupid. Background billboards boast movies that will hopefully never happen (Meryl Streep in a Mrs. Doubtfire remake; Bubba Gump Shrimp The Restaurant: The Movie), and the film has fun layering in cartoon gags atop the detective formula. In one scene, Chip n’ Dale make the requisite stroll to a seedy Skid Row portion of town dubbed The Uncanny Valley, where bad CGI has been left to rot, leading to the first of two fantastic gags involving Seth Rogen. There’s also a sunny Main Street where pure-hearted characters are fronts for black market encounters, offering cheese dealing and access to Muppet fights.
It’s all very silly and fun, matched by the impressive technical feat of seamlessly integrating traditionally animated characters, CGI creations and human actors. Mulaney and Samberg are two very funny actors, and while they don’t stray far from their established personas, they have a fun chemistry and some amusing line deliveries. The cast also includes J.K. Simmons, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Eric Bana, Tim Robinson and more in roles that Disney has requested critics not reveal; only KiKi Layne, playing a human police liaison, feels out of place, having some trouble interacting with her animated co-stars.
Andy Samberg and John Mulaney in “Chip ‘n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers.” Photo by Courtesy of Disney Enterprises/Courtesy of Disney Enterprises, – © 2022 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers has several very funny jokes and gags, so many that it’s likely going to take multiple viewings to catch them all. But the comparisons to Roger Rabbit (whose main character appears very briefly) show where it falls a bit short. Robert Zemeckis’ comedy is a near-perfect film, balancing technical proficiency with wit and a reverence for its noir roots. It tells a clever story with fully fleshed out characters, and nearly 35 years on, is still one of the very best films ever released by Disney.
Rescue Rangers is, first and foremost, a gag machine. And as that, it’s often very successful. But at 90 minutes, the hit-to-miss ratio gets a little unbalanced and there are a few moments where it spins its wheels to further the plot. It probably would have worked best as a 60-minute Disney+ special, similar to The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience (2019), a Netflix special by Lonely Island that managed to be the funniest film of that year at only 30 minutes.
But even disjointed at 97 minutes, Rescue Rangers manages to deliver several laughs, and the audacity at which the script pokes fun at Disney and its competitors is to be admired. Most kids won’t understand a good 75% of the jokes in this movie, but they’ll certainly wonder why their parents are laughing so hard.
