YMMV / Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers (2022)

• Adorkable: Dale. His spacey and childlike personality makes him quite lovable.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: The initial trailers were met with a fair bit of skepticism from many, especially from fans, due to the meta premise and the Denser and Wackier tone being a big change from the original show. When the film actually came out however, it ended up being met with positive reviews and high scores across, with many finding the film to be a hilarious story that provides interesting commentary on animation and Hollywood over the past three decades in spite of its weird and insane premise. The film would go on to become one of the most watched streaming titles within two weeks of its release and ultimately win the 2022 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie.
• Broken Base: Sadly all but inevitable given this movie's premise. While many fans and critics ended up surprisingly enjoying the more meta plot the movie ultimately went for for, just as many fans who would have much preferred a more faithful adaptation of the original show as opposed to something that would have been more fitting for a Bonkers movie or a Who Framed Roger Rabbit sequel were left disappointed.
• Crack Ship: Seriously, who would've thought of a romance between Gadget and Zipper?
• Cry for the Devil: Despite being a horrible person in general, it's hard not to feel at least a little bad for Sweet Pete when he reveals he was kicked out of Hollywood for growing older and endured fear and loneliness in the following years. Even the titular chipmunks felt pity for him and tried to help him, albeit to no avail.
• Demographically Inappropriate Humour:
  • The Tagline of the film is "Rescuing the world takes a pair". Remember that this is for a Disney movie based on two of their classic characters.
  • The second trailer and start of the film has Dale lampshade how "chippendale" is a term for male strippers.
  • Bjornson's cheese shop on Main Street is essentially a G-Rated crackhouse or opium den.
  • The Nick Jr. characters, whose target audience are young children, are mentioned to have mauled the police when a false tip led to a raid on their studios.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The appearance of Ugly Sonic (the much derided and discarded design for movie Sonic from 2019 but changed for 2020) has turned by far into the most popular cameo of the movie, with him going as far as to trend on Twitter and with many people claiming to watch the movie only for him.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Sweet Pete stands out as a highly memorable villain, thanks to his tragic backstory and the fact he manages to be highly entertaining in spite of the fact he's bootlegging toons to horrific fates.
  • Captain Putty, thanks to making fun of the Captain Obvious Reveal of him being a Dirty Cop and then running with it by being absolutely hilarious and having a pretty badass fight scene with Ellie.
• Fanfic Fuel: What are other toons, both with shows currently running as well as those with canceled or finished ones, doing in this world?
• Harsher in Hindsight: Darkwing Duck's appearance in The Stinger clamoring for his own comeback ends up becoming this a day after the film's release, when the reboot being produced by Seth Rogen was confirmed to have been rejected by Disney.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In this movie Flounder gets kidnapped and then bootlegged. The following year, Flounder would end up getting CGI surgery.
  • During the final battle, Sweet Pete's One-Winged Angel form features a Bullet Bill cannon for a right arm. Brian Tyler, who composed this movie's musical score, would eventually go on to compose the musical score of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Additionally, the scene where Bob the dwarf meets Pumbaa, Mantis, and B.O.B would be this if Donkey Kong also showed up as well.
• Just Here for Godzilla:
  • Interest in the film ended up spiking thanks to the reveal that Sonic's infamous original movie design would be appearing.
  • Before that, many likewise were drawn in by all the popular cartoon characters that would show up, specifically those outside the Disney company. Especially since considering the previous year's Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Space Jam: A New Legacy, while having cameos didn't really utilize them on any meaningful level (though ironically, the Looney Tunes only got an occasional nod, and didn't actually appear much in this one).
• Love to Hate:
  • Sweet Pete is a sociopathic criminal willing to ruin the lives of innocent toons out of spite, but his amusingly deadpan and menacing deliveries as well as his sympathetic backstory make him quite memorable nonetheless.
  • Captain Putty is a sadistic, greedy, corrupt asshole whose over-the-top antics courtesy of J. K. Simmons make him very enjoyable to watch.
• Moe: Dale is absolutely adorable, especially in his CGI design.
• No Yay: Gadget and Zipper earned this reaction from fans immediately, as pairing Gadget and Zipper came off as incredibly off-putting and nonsensical, for multiple reasons:
  • Despite this movie portraying every character as Animated Actors, and Zipper clearly having an adult voice, Zipper has always been considered a child or a team pet, while Gadget was always seen as an anthropomorphic adult mouse.
  • Their Crack Pairing also alienated many fans who saw it as cancelling out the canonical Ship Tease of Chip/Gadget and Dale/Gadget in the TV series, either of which fans were hoping to develop further in the film, (even if it was their on-screen characters being shipped, and not their in-universe real personalities).
  • The pairing introduced an extreme Squick factor of trying to imagine how Gadget and Zipper have 42 biological, mutant offspring. Not adopted children, but biological, mutant children.
  • Fans who know that Rescue Rangers evolved from an aborted Rescuers TV series, have an additionally bad taste since they see the Gadget/Zipper pairing as a weird reflection of an Evinrude/Bianca pairing, where the canonical pairing in The Rescuers has always been Bernard & Bianca, who are engaged to be married by the end of the sequel, The Rescuers Down Under.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The main cast outside of Dale are clearly 3D models in a cel-shading, frame-dropped style as opposed to being traditionally animated and it can look incredibly off at times, Zipper and his Conjoined Eyes being a major offender. Ironically enough, despite Dale's CGI design being a Take That! towards uncanny realistic CGI redesigns, he actually looks less off-putting compared to the others. Some of the other characters, like the Three Little Pigs and the MLP cameos, are also done in a similar fashion with likewise jarring results. Later trailers and the film itself would replace them with proper 2D animation (suggesting placeholder animation was used for the first trailer). Chip however, is still animated with Cel Shaded CGI, which is especially noticeable since he's a main character who's on screen for the majority of the film. Monty, Zipper, Gadget, Dale (while in his original appearance) and Sweet Pete also exhibit this issue, which can lead to moments of Unintentional Uncanny Valley.
  • Some of the 2D animations has also gone under fire by a few critics for looking unintentionally cheap and Off-Model in spots. Owing to Moving Picture Company's inexperience in the medium.
  • Parodied in the Uncanny Valley neighborhood, where one citizen walks in place when hitting a fire hydrant. Dale even makes light about how creepy it is. The second trailer even has Bob the Dwarf get his eerie looks insulted by Pumbaa, in a moment of Self-Deprecation by both Disney and MPC (both films' VFX vendor).
• Spiritual Successor:
  • This is likely the closest we'll get to a movie based on Bonkers, given the film's similar meta premise and setting. In fact, some fans have questioned why it wasn't a Bonkers film to begin with.
  • In a similar vein, many fans have claimed that the movie is closer to a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit than anything related to Chip and Dale. The appearances of Roger himself, a reference to Jessica Rabbit, and a bottle of Dip being shown in Pete's possession arguably even makes the movie an outright Stealth Sequel.
• Squick:
  • Gadget and Zipper getting married after their series ended is one thing. Them somehow having 42 children is another thing entirely.
  • In the end credits it's revealed that Monty is recovering from his bootleg-experience ie. having bandaged ears. Given that his Dumbo-ears had to be cut off is a rather gruesome image.
• Tainted by the Preview: The film's meta premise and setting that feels more in line with Roger Rabbit or Bonkers than the actual cartoon it was based on has not sit well with a contingent of fans who were desiring a more faithful adaptation. Fans also reacted negatively to Chip and Dale's more realistic human voices, as opposed to the high-pitched voices they had in the cartoon. Despite this, the film was moderately well-received upon release.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: While the film shares the show's namesake and all the main characters from it are present, they don't spend much of the movie together. It's mostly Chip and Dale through the majority of the flick and all only really come together near the climax. Gadget and Zipper are particularly noteworthy as they don't make a proper appearance until near the climax, despite both of them being main characters in the show.
• Ugly Cute: Some of the bootlegged characters are strangely adorable, such as a tiger-striped Cheshire Cat, Marceline in an Inkblot Cartoon Style, Phineas as a goofy looking bird, Patrick Star with Wembley Fraggle's head and Bambi with the wings and colors of Pegasus.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nobody expected that Roger Rabbit, Indiana Jones, MC Skat Kat, OR The Mane 6 would be in this movie. Especially with Amblin Entertainment blocking Disney from making anything new with Roger Rabbit for years, MC Skat Kat being owned by Virgin Records, and only ever appearing in a Warner Bros. project, the Mane Six being owned by Hasbro, and Disney having left the fifth Indiana Jones in Development Hell for so long until it finally came out in 2023.
  • Nor was anyone expecting the discarded movie design of Sonic the Hedgehog to make an appearance either, let alone in such a major role.
  • No one expected Tigra to appear, especially with her appearance from The Avengers: United They Stand. Not only does she rarely make appearances in Marvel works outside the comics, like how she's not in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of this film's release, but also due to the show she takes her appearance from being considered an Old Shame for Marvel animation.
  • Due to being DreamWorks Animation characters, no one expected B.O.B. and Mantis to make a quick cameo appearance for a joke about how they, Pumbaa, and Bob the Dwarf are all voiced by Seth Rogen.
  • No one expected the cameos from Randy Marsh and Butt-head. Aside from being owned by Paramount Global, they are also from much cruder, adult cartoons, which isn't exactly the first thing people associate with Disney.
  • The credits feature a cameo by the titular characters of The Shnookums & Meat Funny Cartoon Show, a show that was a big Old Shame for The Disney Afternoon, to the point where DuckTales (2017) doesn't even acknowledge it.
  • Perhaps the most unexpected cameo of all is that of Mr. Natural, a rather obscure underground comic character with no other appearances in animated media whatsoever ^note  Not counting a now-deleted animated short that featured Mr. Natural doing bizarre SFW movements . Let alone, a character created by infamous comic artist Robert Crumb (of Fritz the Cat fame) whose works are extremely NSFW for casual viewers.
  • No one would have expected He-Man and Skeletor, complete with a role reprise from Alan Oppenheimer for the latter in addition to voicing the former, to have shown up given other more recent versions of the two having popped up.
  • Another unexpected cameo during the '80s is the Autobot Blaster from the original The Transformers cartoon, even more given he's not a major character on the level of Optimus Prime (whose leg is used as part of Sweet Pete's monster form) or Megatron (whose only nod is his fusion cannon, albeit one that fires Bullet Bills from Super Mario Bros., as the weapon on Sweet Pete's monster form).
  • Though not exactly a visual cameo, some Nicktoons are also alluded to; Squidward has a star on the Walk of Fame, and PAW Patrol, Rugrats, and Peppa Pig (while not a true Nicktoon, Nickelodeon still has broadcast rights in the U.S.) are all mentioned. Jimmy Neutron's iconic hair can also be identified in one scene.
  • While not a cameo per se, seeing Br'er Bear's coat and farm hat may come as a surprise considering Disney's current stance with his movie, especially in The New '20s.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: While there are some instances of Special Effects Failure, the movie does an impressive job of blending in different forms of animation, from 2D animation, CGI (for both obvious and invisible uses like set extensions), Stop Motion, muppets to even sock puppets and gives a feel of a world where creatures made from different animation styles live, similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

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