So, I was skimming through some old journals I'd posted a (long) while back, and I found that I once did a half-gripe, half-optimistic thing on the then-upcoming 'Rescue Rangers' movie that Disney had just green-lit. Seven years later, and much to my surprise, the dang thing's finally come out... and to my even bigger surprise, I rather enjoyed it. Like, quite a bit. At long last, nearly-a-decade-ago me can breathe a sigh of relief.

Not that I didn't totally call the 'munks-in-a-toilet gag, or the countless pop-culture references, or the fact that Seth Rogen's in it... but I'm delighted to say that my cynicism about these things was largely unfounded, because unlike so many other nostalgia-bait junk flicks that have come and gone by the wayside, the meta spoofery on display in 'Rescue Rangers' isn't a lazy cash-grab so much as a clever satire - and thankfully, one that's tempered by an actual sense of affection for the source material.

Not that many of the film's choices haven't been controversial amongst us die-hard C&D fans (and here come the spoilers)... for one, they've ditched the classic helium 'munk voices, which may be a first for the characters (though it kinda makes sense in context). Also, for a 'Rangers' movie, it's mainly a story about Chip and Dale, with fan-faves Gadget, Zipper and Monty sidelined as essentially extended cameos. The biggest rug-pull, though, is the right outta the gate reveal that 'Rescue Rangers' itself was only ever an in-universe tv show, with all the beloved Disney Afternoon critters being actors playing fictional versions of themselves.

We first meet the 'munks in grade-school, a pair of 'toon misfits who grow up as inseparable besties with a gift for comedy. Parlaying their skills into a successful show, their celebrity comes crashing down on them when clashing egos drive them apart (and get their show canceled in the process). So far, so 'Access Hollywood'... but then the story jumps forward 30 years, and that's when things get appealingly strange. Chip has quit the biz completely to become an insurance agent, while Dale clings to his old fanbase via the convention circuit, desperate to re-live his glory days. It's a surprising choice, to hang themes of obsolescence, aging and a wistful nostalgia for one's glory days on a pair of cartoon chipmunks whose previous incarnation's biggest concern in life was stopping Fat Cat from stealing all the pies... but it also gives Chip and Dale an appealing richness of character that they've never really had before. If 'Rescue Rangers' the tv show was mainly for kids, the movie version shows us the lonely, disappointed grown-ups behind the scenes.

The movie does its best to sell you on its peculiar 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?' world building, and while it definitely suffers in comparison to that much more elegantly-crafted film, it's serviceable enough... until you start to think about it too much. Therein lies the first of 'Rescue Rangers's two shortcomings - for a flick that's trying pretty hard to remind you of 'Roger Rabbit', both in terms of its irreverent metafictional humor and its 'toons-and-humans-together-in-Hollywood setting, it's problematic that the rules of Chip and Dale's world are drastically inconsistent. This would be less of a problem in a fluffier, who-cares-it's-just-a-dumb-movie context... but aging and the struggle against obsolescence are key themes here, and it's just plain weird that major plot points only seem to apply randomly. For instance, our main characters are shown as little kids (kits?) who grow up into adults - as does the main villain, a bitter and dumpy Peter Pan whose mid-life crisis has taken a criminally dark turn. Why, then, is one of the original Lost Boys from Neverland who pops up (for an admittedly hilarious cameo) still a kid? Why, too, does the threat of violence seem palpable (guns and explosions do a lot more damage here than they do in 'Roger Rabbit'), except when 'toons are still shown to be capable of regenerating body parts and shrugging off skull-crushing blows with heavy sticks? 'Roger Rabbit' may have side-stepped some of the weirder questions that arise when you blend cartoons and reality, but it also took a lot of care to establish the basic rules. 'Rescue Rangers' doesn't ignore its own rules so much as contradict them for narrative convenience, and it's distracting.

The other big quibble is the quality of the animation itself. While some of the character designs are nicely expressive, there's no getting around the irony that, for a story that largely spoofs cheap cash-in cartoons, some of the main characters themselves look pretty rough. Chip, in particular, is supposed to represent classic hand-drawn 2D animation, but he never looks like anything other than a flatly-rendered 3D model. Still, even he fares better than Gadget, who quite frankly looks terrible from any angle... honestly, the brief snippets of the original '80s animation look better.

For all of its flaws and gripes, though, in the end what saves the movie for me is the core relationship between our two pint-sized would-be detectives... underneath the snarky tinseltown spoofery (much of which is legitimately funny) and pop-culture fluff is a genuinely warm-hearted story of two estranged best friends reconciling their differences while solving a fast-paced and enjoyable crime caper.