Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers is better than you might expect

[Thrudd]

I dunno.

This still has the stench of "here's a story we've had lying around for ages and an IP we weren't using, lets bash them together and plaster the screen in referential in-jokes and hope nobody notices". You can love a thing and still not do it justice.

The comparisons to Roger Rabbit are, I think, unfounded. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a story written for the characters that are in it and the cameos are a consequence of the fact that some of those characters are animated and some are not (and *that* is an allegory for the treatment of real world minority groups in the Hollywood hills, not purely an excuse for references).

This is a story that could have been told with *any* characters. "Actors from an old show have to return to their glory days but for real this time", and indeed has been told with other characters when it was called Galaxy Quest (which, again, used the conventions of its own genre for humour and drama).

Actually, an interview I read with the director mentioned that the original writers came up with the idea of doing a "Roger Rabbit-esque meta-take on Chip n' Dale, which would find the animated chipmunks as washed-up actors in the real world...". So it sounds like it was written for these specific characters. That is believable, given how many gags and plot points involve the difference in scale between the tiny cartoons and the human world. Monterey Jack's uncontrollable attraction to stinky cheese is relevant to a major plot point, and they make use of other elements from the TV show as well.

Also, I recall Roger Rabbit having lots of cameos of random Warner Bros. and Disney characters, or knockoff versions of them, that weren't directly serving a role in the allegory...they were just there to establish the setting. This is the same thing.

There's some legitimately funny stuff in it and it is technically well done. I guess I don't care about the IP enough to take "justice to the original" into consideration. Have elements of this story been done before in other films? Yes. But it hasn't been done quite this way before, and they did a decent job with what they had. Decent - not great. I found it good enough that I could still chuckle at the gags, and there are enough of them that I ignored whatever flaws were in the story and just had a good time. I was also in a particularly silly mood that night, and that is a big component in being able to enjoy stuff like this.

My position on the film, as an adult who generally doesn't watch kids shows or films anymore: Not good enough to buy a ticket for it, don't buy a subscription just for it. If you already have the subscription, and you're in a silly mood, it's watchable. Maybe worth renting for a few dollars, again only in the silliest of moods.