So the boys and girls it's been a fairly long time since I talked about anything that came from the Disney brand and while yes I have talked about Marvel movies i've not talked about something that Disney themselves have created in exactly a month. I thought that it was time to end that dry spell and look back at something that the company had put out and while it would have been very easy for me to do a Disney animated movie I never like to do things the easy way and so I chose what was technically this shows debut episode and so join me as I review the very first episode of "Chip 'N' Dale: Rescue Rangers" called "Piratsy Under The Seas" enjoy.
The plot of the episode is the rescue rangers find themselves of a Trash Barge after Dale gets himself taken by a rubbish collector and his friends try to save him but while on the barge both he and Chip find themselves kidnapped by rat pirates and so the duo along with the rest of the rescue rangers have to find a way of the pirates underwater ship. In terms of what I thought of the story isn't that bad it's the kind of story that one would expect from this show and to the episodes credit it gets straight to the point with the story which is something that you hardly ever see in either cartoons or in live action or at least I think so anyways.
Starring in this episode are Corey Burton as Dale , Zipper and 'Avery and Peter Cullen as Monterey Jack and Young Ned. Also starring in the episode is voice acting legend Jim Cummings as Jolly Roger and voice acting legend Tress MacNeille as Chip and Gadget. I honestly had no idea how many voice acting legends were in this episode nearly everyone who is in this episode is considered a legendary voice actor and so to think they all appeared in this episode is truly mind blowing to me since I love them all.
In terms of what I thought about the acting in the episode it was honestly really freaking good all of the actors deliver truly great performances. The only issue that I personally have with the acting is that the voices for both Chip and Dale can get quite annoying since all they did was alter the pitch of the voices and because of that it's hard to tell which is which because they both sound the same and so I think that they should have come up with different voices for each of the characters and found a way to make there voices less annoying but that's just me.
Now even tho the show was indeed produced by Walt Disney Television Animation now simply Disney Television Animation the actual animation for the show and I assume the whole series was handled by TMS Entertainment then going under the name of TMS Entertainment Inc. For me the animation was at best OK it's not bad by any means but for something that has the Disney name on it you expect better animation even from a TV show and I just wasn't getting it.
If you recall at the start of the review I referred to this episode as the first episode and that is both the truth and a lie because the second episode of the series "Catteries Not Included" first aired as a sneak preview of the series. However when the episode was re shown after the official premiere it became the second episode but I personally refer to this episode as the first episode as it was the first episode to air when the show officially premiered.
This show aired as part of the famous programming block The Disney Afternoon which would air every weekday afternoon. This show actually didn't start out as part of The Disney Afternoon it actually started out on Disney Channel but because enough episodes were produced to get the show into syndication it was sold with Ducktales into syndication and added to The Disney Afternoon to support new show Adventures Of the Gummi Bears so while this isn't a Disney Afternoon original it's one of the three shows that helped that block standout since both Chip and Dale were Disney characters before this show was even made and so you all know this episode and show came out in 1989 with the series lasting until 1990.
As you can no doubt tell by the poster The Disney Afternoon was a two hour programming block made up of almost entirely new cartoons with a few classic shorts thrown in to get it up to two hours. Honestly reading the shows that premiered as part of or were added to this block reads like a what's what of a nineties Disney fans childhood since we have shows like the original Ducktales , Talespin , Adventures Of The Gummi Bears , Goof Troop , Hercules and many more it's no wonder this block was not only a huge success but is also fondly remembered since it had alot of really good and memorable shows on it.
Now one thing I never really noticed until I was watching this episode is the fact that that dressed Chip up to look like Indiana Jones and they made dale look like the main character from Magnum PI the original not the remake. Which honestly kind of suits there personalises for this show and thus this episode since Dale is more of a goof ball while Chip is the kind of character who would go looking for adventure.
Something that I really didn't like about this episode is the fact that the over three rescue rangers those being Monterey Jack , Gadget and Zipper don't really have a alot to do in this episode. There whole purpose in this episode is to rescue Chip and Dale and that's it which really isn't that much since they get close to archiving that within fifteen minuets and so I would halve liked it if these characters perhaps had a subplot going on or something that could tie into the main plot of the episode instead of just having them try to rescue Chip and Dale.
One of the things that I liked about the episode was how they portrayed the pirates and I thought that they were done in a creative way. Since there not really portrayed as the bad guys but neither are they the good guys they were kind of in the middle in that they'd do bad things in one scene but in the next scene they'd act like good guys which to me made them more entertaining tow watch which is always a plus in my opinion.
Overall in terms of first episodes this one wasn't that bad since it gave me a good sense of what the show was about and how the other episodes would play out. That being said tho this episode isn't that good since there are some jokes in the episode that don't really work that well but overall the episode is really good in my opinion as such this episode gets a 7 out of 10 from me and if you guys want to see me cover more episodes from Disney Afternoon shows then please let me know.
All of the images from this review were gathered from either Google Images or the official Disney fandom wiki page. I'll admit I wasn't expecting any of the images to be high quality since this is show start in 1989 but I was pleasantly surprised to find that all of the images were very high quality as such I cannot recommend ether of these websites enough since the mages look so good so go and use either website if you want high quality images.