'Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers' packs witty nostalgia for adults with Disney fun for kids
NEW YORK -- "Sometimes some crimes, go slipping through the cracks. But these two gumshoes, are picking up the slack."
That's right, 30 years later "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" are back!
If you're 35-45+ you might have spent your childhood afternoons with Chip and Dale and the rest of the Rescue Rangers team.
This movie puts your favorite investigators, now estranged from each other, in modern-day Los Angeles and plays not only to kids, but the adults who love a dose of nostalgia.
"I have two kids, they're 9 and 11 and sometimes they want to watch a movie that's really just for kids and that's when I kind of leave the room or take a nap, and sometimes they watch ones where it's for them and it's for me, so when I read the script I was excited that this one had the potential, as you just mentioned to play to both audiences," said Akiva Schaffer, director.
Schaffer is one-third of the comedy trio "The Lonely Island." Another third of that group is the very funny Andy Samberg of SNL and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" fame.
"I mean, you know me, anything my man Kiv is putting his name on, it's a yes from yo soy, which is an incorrect use of that, so I would say that Dale spoke to me in that he is pretty silly, and a goof, and furry, very furry, as am I," Samberg said. John Mulaney's "Chip" plays the perfect straight man to zany "Dale."
The movie explores many of the types of animation used over the past 60 years and combines them with live-action.
"It was part of what made me want to do the movie because it felt like if 'Roger Rabbit' is the gold standard of live-action with animation, but it's been 30 years since then and all the different kinds of animation styles that have come around, what would it look like to kind of see them all thrown in together?" Schaffer said.
Helping to bridge that gap between the animated world and the live-action world is actress KiKi Layne, who plays an investigator named "Ellie." She's the film's only "human" main character.
"No, it was never lonely (onset) because Akiva and the whole crew that was assembled around me was, I mean, we all had such a great time because we got to enjoy imagination and reconnecting to the kid in all of us," Layne said.
She helps Chip and Dale try to find out what happened to their friend and former "Rescue Rangers" co-star Monterey Jack.
"Animation has changed quite a bit in that time and so to be a part of a film that highlights that and pokes fun at it but is also celebrating it, so I thought of course, why would I not run around and solve a crime with Chip and Dale," Layne said.
The film is rated PG, and you'll see why, as stinky cheese is compared to an illegal drug market, Peter Pan really did grow up, and there are jokes about motion capture technology used in "The Polar Express" leaving the characters with "weird, dead eyes."
"Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers" premieres May 20, 2022, exclusively on Disney+.
