Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) is giving new life to its 1989-90 TV series “Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers” with a new film that reimagines the adventuresome chipmunks as caustic commentators on Hollywood.
What Happened: In the trailer of its new Disney+ feature film “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” the characters reflect Hollywood animation past and present with Chip retaining his traditional 2D cel animation appearance while Dale acknowledges he had “CGI surgery” to obtain a 3D look.
The trailer takes further potshots at bad CGI animation, including a gag about the ineptitude of the CGI effects in the 2019 film version of “Cats,” and also tosses in jokey references to 1980s and 1990s pop culture including “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Jurassic Park” plus a glimpse of Scrooge McDuck diving into this gold coin vault, a nod to “DuckTales,” another Disney series from the late 1980s.
Even the film’s social media campaign has a Hollywood hipster-insider vibe, with the tagline “It’s not a reboot. It’s a comeback....all-new, never-done-before, completely 100% Original movie (based on pre-existing IP owned by Disney).” The film premieres on May 20.
Why It Happened: The Chip ‘n Dale characters were mostly discontinued after the “Rescue Rangers” series ran its course. The chipmunks headlined a 12-episode Disney+ series in 2021 called “Chip ‘n Dale: Park Life” that was co-produced with France’s Xilam Animation, but those cartoons were without dialogue and relied entirely on slapstick visuals.
For the generation that included “Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers” as part of their television viewing habits, the new film offers both a nostalgic vibe along with a Seth MacFarlane-style level of pop culture deconstruction, thus adding new spices to a well-worn recipe. And for today’s children that can find the original “Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers” episodes on Disney+, the new film offers an extension of that 65-episode series.
Photo: Disney+
