Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers
DISNEY+
Surely nostalgia is the main stakeholder in the revitalisation of Chip ‘n Dale? Chipmunk pairings put to the big screen have been the equivalent of visual torture in recent years. The rise of merchandise-pushing vehicles for former cartoon stars is as sickening as it is profitable. Alvin and the Chipmunks didn’t receive four sequels for no good reason. Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers appears to be a fairly safe, albeit slight break from the norm of adapting animated characters that people vaguely remember and repurposing them, for good or for ill. Marmaduke and Tom & Jerry have done it within the last year, and it is only fair that every animated creature, cretinous or otherwise, receives their just desserts.
A half-and-half style to the animation blurs old and new school far too closely and obviously to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and with little success to either the narrative or the style director Akiva Schaffer hopes to capture. Jokes about Thomas Chippendale and the third-place status of the eponymous characters, while vaguely humorous thanks to the back-breaking efforts of Andy Samberg, are rather telling. Nobody really remembers Chip ‘n Dale. They are forgotten, but not gone. Reinventing them for a new gaggle of audiences, slobbering adults who hope for that injection of childhood glee or the kids that need something to watch for an hour before drifting off to stick LEGO up their nose, is the best Disney can do. Keep the eyes peeled for product sighting cameo here and the ears prickled for record-scratch montage there.
Grim not because it tries its best to write up a new narrative, successfully so, but because it has fallen for the usual, below-par threshold. A break of the fourth wall sets up the characters as the Curb Your Enthusiasm style peek behind the curtain. Their achievements as actors rather than real adventurers turned into awash actors with a need to rekindle their passions is at least an interesting angle. Not a new one, but the back and forth between Samberg and John Mulaney is enough to carry the film across the finish line. Disastrous it may be to think about, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers would have been less grating, more enjoyable and even fulfilling in its desire to recreate “classic” characters had it not stuffed itself full of patented Disney copyright cameos.
Created in 1943, falling to the wayside by the mid-1980s and rarely pimped out until now, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is the latest bit of cannon fodder from Disney, a company that would rather re-release assets than think of something new. It’s hard to blame them when it works so well. Horribly, terrifyingly reliant on the references to a culture that has receded further than the hairlines of those who actually grew up watching these chipmunk freaks. This cameo-clad bit of nonsense boasts the best and worst of nostalgic filmmaking. A grim exploration of this weird and chipmunk-filled world with ill intention at heart. Can anything else be expected of the Disney powerhouse? Mad old Mickey, scraping the barrel of content and coming up with two diseased rodents ready to be voiced by Samberg and Mulaney. A cursed world indeed.