Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

SPOILERS BELOW

I was really hoping to like this, but it manages to mess pretty much everything up on every level.

The basic story beats are rote and messy, like the writers sat next to someone reading Save The Cat once (it starts with a drawn out unnecessary voiceover prologue instead of organically revealing the one or two salient points, the 'estranged friends' arc continually resets and wobbles along on unconvincing motivations, and the 'franchise-milking is bad/prioritise friends over business' theme starts muddled and utterly falls apart by the end credits).

Most of the jokes get fluffed (they literally go to the wrong side of the tracks except both sides look equally bad and there's a sign saying "the wrong side", the cops say "get the battering ram" and then it cuts to TWO cartoon rams, the ghetto called The Uncanny Valley is not a valley, Scrooge McDuck is seen at a spa just sitting in a jacuzzi of money throwing it about instead of, y'know, swimming in it which is his whole thing). There is one great gag that they do pull off (although they still could have executed it a lot better by having them say something smarter and having them all do the laugh at the same time), where Seth Rogen's character runs into Puumba and a bunch of other Rogen-voiced toons.

The references are shoved in your face over and over (Ugly Sonic would have been a great background detail, but here he's like the fifth biggest character and he's only got the one joke about his teeth, the whole bootleg bit is great the first time, then it turns into the entire villainous scheme and is utterly flogged by the end of the movie), show no understanding for the thing they're referencing (He-Man and Skeletor don't have Filmation style animation, the issue with Zemeckis mo-cap eyes wasn't that they pointed in the wrong direction, it was that they were soulless, and those characters never looked as good as they do here - the rendering, detail and animation is way off), and simultaneously miss opportunities (why are so many background characters generic CG models? Why isn't the scary snake Kaa, or at least Sir Hiss? Why is one of the henchmen just 'a bear'?).

I understand that they may not have had the budget to hand-draw their main 2D characters, but the cel-shaded fakery here often slips, and regardless their animation is stiff and dull to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of it was automated in some way.

The rules don't seem to have been thought through (some toons age, some don't; some act just like their 'characters', some don't; some characters like Lumiere who got a 3D update don't appear in that form (and apparently redesigns don't count); they can take the standard infinite toon damage except sometimes apparently they might die from drowning or getting shot with a cannonball, one of the bootlegs is a remake of Aladdin with an unchanged Peg Leg Pete, Captain S. Putty refers to silly putty as a thing that he is not).

The whole thing feels more like a tacky commercial than a loving well-crafted movie, and it doesn't do itself any favours with the early Roger Rabbit cameo, reminding us of how well this concept can be done.

Rating: Terrible.