Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers Review

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Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers premieres Friday, May 20 on Disney+.

An animated pop-culture extravaganza, Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers is a fast and funny roller coaster into a cyclone of cartoon characters, with clever gags, inventive action, and enough heart and depth to allow a story to eke through.

Directed by The Lonely Island's Akiva Schaffer, this particular Rescue Rangers outing is a meta affair, portraying the famous chipmunk BFFs as actors who once starred on the Rescue Rangers TV series decades earlier. Now, appropriately washed up in typical E! True Hollywood Story fashion (thanks to Dale's solo career attempt), Chip and Dale must bury the past in order to rekindle their friendship and save the day for real.

This hybrid slice of live-action/animation silliness is perhaps the closest thing we'll ever get to a follow up for 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and not just because Roger Rabbit himself pops up briefly. This is a world — a Los Angeles to be more specific — where humans and cartoons co-exist, and where any cartoon who breaks big in show business films their movies just like any other performer, except on an animated set. It’s not a stretch by any means to imagine this being what Roger Rabbit's L.A. would be like 70 years later.

Oh, and let's not forget this La La Land's seedy underbelly, which is the other noir-ish element present here, helping with the Roger Rabbit vibes. Not everything in the world of cartoons is hand-drawn sunshine and computer-generated puppies. There are criminal activities afoot and when Chip and Dale's old Rescue Rangers co-star Monterey Jack (Eric Bana) goes missing, the estranged pals reunite to track him down amidst pushers of stinky cheese, promoters of Muppet fights, and a