Are you sitting down? Good. I highly recommend you brace yourself before you watch this first trailer for the long-, long-awaited live-action Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers film, because it’s a lot. No, more than that. I mean a lot. And I don’t think you need to have grown up loving the classic Disney cartoon of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s to understand how absolutely bananas this movie looks.
It would probably be a kindness to give you the official plot synopsis before you watch the trailer, but I watched it cold, and it is an experience. Behold:
Right?! Roger Rabbit! Cheese addiction! CG surgery procedures! A completely unexpected True Hollywood Story plot instead of rescuing or ranging! A My Little Pony stampede! The goddamned cats from Cats! Honestly, the fact that Seth Rogen plays a very unsettling CG dwarf is honestly one of the least weird things in this film. Here’s that synopsis, to help you digest the weirdness:
“In Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Chip and Dale are living amongst cartoons and humans in modern-day Los Angeles, but their lives are quite different now. It has been decades since their successful television series was cancelled, and Chip (voice of comedian John Mulaney) has succumbed to a life of suburban domesticity as an insurance salesman. Dale (voice of Brooklyn 99‘s Andy Sandberg), meanwhile, has had CGI surgery and works the nostalgia convention circuit, desperate to relive his glory days. When a former castmate mysteriously disappears, Chip and Dale must repair their broken friendship and take on their Rescue Rangers detective personas once again to save their friend’s life.”
So it seems the duo will be doing some rescuing after all, and I have to presume the castmate needing rescuing is Gadget Hackwrench, who seems to be conspicuously missing in the present-day, at least in the trailer. Of course, she could be busy leading the real-life cult formed around her in Russia, which is honestly a fact so weird it may actually be a plot point in this extremely meta movie.
In addition to Mulaney, Samberg, and Rogen, Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers also stars KiKi Layne, Will Arnett, Eric Bana, Flula Borg, Dennis Haysbert, Keegan-Michael Key, Tress MacNeille, Tim Robinson, and somehow J.K. Simmons. (MacNeille, by the way, voiced Gadget in the original cartoon, but that doesn’t mean she’s reprising the role.) It will premiere on May 20, exclusively on Disney+.