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Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers Movie Review

Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a 2022 live-action/animated comedy film directed by Akiva Schaffer and starring John Mulaney and Andy Samberg. It’s a fun, but problematic flick.

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“Honey! Someone’s doing a cool pose in the driveway!“

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Chip and Dale live amongst cartoons and humans in modern-day Los Angeles, but their lives are quite different now. When a former cast mate mysteriously disappears, Chip and Dale must repair their broken friendship and save their friend. Much has been said about this movie being a worthy successor to ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’, but I wholeheartedly disagree with that sentiment. It’s a fine, fun movie, but it’s nowhere near the best that this mixed medium has to offer, which isn’t a lot, but it’s better than what we got here.

This is a very meta movie. It is so meta, in fact, that it started to annoy me more than thrill me as a big Disney fan as the movie is made for fans first and foremost. I do respect Disney for making fun of themselves, but some of the jokes simply fell flat and some were downright disrespectful. The one directed against Peter Pan was done in poor taste given what happened to the actual voice actor.

Others fare better and the movie is at its best in the small tidbits that offer great Easter Eggs for Disney fans. For example, in the sewer you see an abandoned Rapunzel doll and the action depends on her huge hair in that scene. That kind of stuff was smart and very well done. But still, I wished to have seen more of the protagonists instead of all these meta elements.

With that being said, what we got of the two was actually very good. Samberg was excellent here and so is Mulaney. It was wonderful hearing this ‘Big Mouth’ star voicing this important character. One of them being CGI while the other is traditionally animated was a very interesting choice that paid off.

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The mixing of the two mediums was superbly done on Rescue Rangers. The humans and cartoons living together was interesting and I wish that the world building was stronger instead of just relying on meta jokes. The spy adventure elements were pretty good and some of the humor was fantastic (the Ugly Sonic cameo was hilarious), but the villain wasn’t great and the second half was not as memorable as the former one.