Five Ways Chip N’ Dale Rescue Rangers is the Roger Rabbit Sequel We Needed

Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers, now available on Disney+, felt like it was quickly dumped on the streaming platform without a lot of marketing support.

The biggest buzz pre-release was the unusual streaming ad comparing the film to Chippendale Dancers, so I was completely unprepared for what was about to be the finest piece of meta animation since Who Frame Roger Rabbit.

Although it’s not as stylish as its predecessor, the filmmakers have crafted something that firmly sits in the same “universe” of noire intrigue.

With a modern view on the Hollywood myth and a plot that skirts as close to L.A. Confidential as can be delivered on a family-oriented platform, Rescue Rangers recasts the Disney afternoon hit of the late 80s / early 90s into a mediation on the nature of celebrity.

Here are five ways that Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers is the spiritual sequel to Roger Rabbit that we desperately needed:

A Bigger Universe:

Ugly Sonic sells merch at a fan expo

Where Roger Rabbit broke ground by pairing classic cartoon characters from a patchwork of other studios into a singular property, Rescue Rangers continues this tradition with a twist by adding internet memes and advertising characters to the mix. Ugly Sonic is just one of the breakout cameos in the film.

Animation Styles as Fashion:

Two cats from the poorly received film musical fight over garbage in the Uncanny Valley neighborhood of Chip ‘N Dale’s fictional LA

Rescue Rangers doesn’t shy away from referencing changing styles in media. The same way Betty Boop, a cigar girl at the Ink and Paint Club in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, famously opines about losing on-screen work because of her black and white coloration in a color film era, we find Chip and Dale tackling this same issue head-on with Dale opting for a form of CG plastic surgery. The film discusses this in a frank way with other characters like Baloo from the Jungle Book having undergone the treatment to stay relevant in a changing media environment.

This theme culminates in the titular characters making a trek to a part of Los Angeles called “The Uncanny Valley”, a ghetto where unnerving computer generated characters with Polar Express “eyes” live in squalor.

Pulling Back the Curtain:

Cheese-addicted Monterey Jack asks for help

The plot kicks off when a cheese-addicted Monterey Jack leaves a cryptic voicemail for the chipmunk duo asking for help. When we catch up with him he’s a paranoid, unshaven, wreck who owes a gang money he can’t pay and fears for his life. When he suddenly disappears Chip and Dale are questioned by the police for being the last people who saw him. Like Baby Herman in Roger Rabbit, we get to see how famous characters live outside of their child-friendly images.

Noire Los Angeles:

Peter Pan is a human trafficking crimelord

As Chip ‘N Dale go deeper into the criminal underworld to discover what became of their friend they find discarded child-actor Peter Pan is the ringleader of an organization that kidnaps cartoons, surgically alters them against their will, and forces them to perform in bootlegs and mock-busters for overseas markets. That plot is so closely tied to the landscape of Los Angeles that it fits firmly in the noire genre. Like Chinatown’s water wars inspired plot heavily influenced Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Rescue Rangers feels cut from the same cloth as L.A. Confidential in its obsession with celebrity, corrupt police, and Black Dhalia-esque surgeries. Some have even taken offense to Rescue Rangers because the backstory of Chip ‘N Dale’s Peter Pan walks too close a line to the actual Peter Pan child actor Bobby Driscoll. Driscoll, who appeared not only as Peter Pan but in a host of live action films for Disney, was discarded by the studio when he hit puberty. He ultimately ended up living a short life of addiction in and out of trouble with the law.

Corruption:

The secondary villain is power structures

Like all good noire mysteries the villains are many and complicated.

In Rescue Rangers the corrupt Judge Doom played by Christopher Lloyd is replaced by J.K. Simmons as Captain Putty. Deconstructing power systems are vital to the noire genre and just like Roger Rabbit taught a generation of children that the real villain is greed, Rescue Rangers does the same when we discover the highest ranking police officials are in on Peter Pan’s toon-trafficking operation.

Question authority kids!

Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers is streaming now on Disney+.