Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

User Review

• 

  d_riptide

  5 / 10

  If there’s one childhood staple that I’ve repeatedly heard of but never got around to seeing, it’s Chip ’n’ Dale. Never really got the time to see what the hype surrounding them was, plus I was burned out by Alvin and the freakin’ Chipmunks…..so you can imagine the audible sigh that left me when I saw the live action trailers. The last thing I wanted was another SCOOB! or more Chipmunk movies.
  
  That being said…..”Chip’n Dale: Rescue Rangers” is meh. At best, it’s somewhat what I wanted Space Jam: A New Legacy to be and at worst, is another to be stashed away in the vault of Disneys mediocre live action remakes.
  
  
  What really drew me into this movie eventually is how impeccable they made the presentation surrounding the worldbuilding and the characters. Taking the ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ live action 2D hybrid approach and lacing it with this ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ aesthetic not only gives the impeccable variety of diverse animation more of a leg to stand on but the way they spoof classic games and cartoons in general from so many different eras was interesting. It’s nothing spectacular but Akiva Schaffer's direction is barely able to adapt to the style.
  
  I will say that its self-aware tone is more of a help to the uncanny valley lending itself to the production design as much as a hinderance and that’s mostly because of the cinematography giving the more kookier sequences some levity. But the editing is substandard, Brian Tyler’s music is strangely forgettable compared to his other works and the “comedy” is severely hit or miss. Sometimes the gags are more fresh than others and other times, they’re not meta enough for the content they have and even the line deliveries on all the actors minus a few feel so artificial and feigned that I was constantly second guessing whether that was the plan or not.
  
  But otherwise, the clunky dialogue really lets everyone down despite the so-so acting.
  
  
  A showbiz satire about media ownership and the good and the bad regarding our nostalgia fixation, there unfortunately isn’t a whole lot to take away from the plot at hand from the cliched story beats regarding Chip and Dales separation and everything in-between because despite its premise, the plot is AGGRESSIVELY tame. You know everything that’s going to happen in the manner in which it’s going to happen and every time they try to call out something cliche only to go do it anyways is possibly even more annoying. You’re not being clever constantly poking fun at how lazy and repetitive Hollywood has become, only to use those same exact lazy and repetitive ideas themselves and neither is recycling the same plot from Roger Rabbit; it’s getting old now.
  
  You can't really hide your creative bankruptcy and nostalgia-baiting behind the veneer of irony and worse of all, here there’s hardly any energy or momentum to justify all the gags that breeze right by you. The film seems determined to get itself as over with as possible but even so, there’s urgency to anything because they continue to play it so safe. For everyone saying this is more adult then we give it credit for, I don’t get it: nothing about its themes or structure points out to anything remotely fresh. Again, I don’t mind cliches; we need them every once in a while but they serve no purpose if you’re not going to present them in an interesting light or put a spin on them.
  
  
  
  It’s just a corporate product trying to flaunt its popular and nostalgic properties over telling a decent story, which is already rather formulaic in the grand scheme of things but I’d like to argue there’s something of value here. Few films have been able to capture the lightning in a bottle that was Rodger Rabbit in the past but this one came close for only but a few fleeting moments.
  
  Better luck and better buck next time.

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