Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-Review by Professor Popinjay

It might be because I only recently finished watching the mediocre The Replacements animated series, but Rescue Rangers holds up really well. The animation is superb, the stories are varied, the characters, be they main, recurring, or appearing only once, are well rounded and interesting. The villains are hilarious. The voice acting is top notch.

This of course features the usual suspects of voice actors, many of whom are still working hard to this very day. Tress Macnielle, Rob Paulsen, Jim Cummings, Frank Welker, Peter Cullen. Heh, Rescue Rangers may as well have been titled the Jim Cummings and Tress Macnielle show. Or equally, the Peter Cullen and Tress Macnielle show as Jim and Peter pretty much shared the character of Monterey Jack. I could not tell the difference between them!  They HAD to be paying them overtime. Unless I’m mistaken, a voice actor as part of the Screen Actors Guild can do up to three voices in one episode before they have to be paid twice and I’m almost certain some of these guys did well over three in some episodes.

Season two starts with a five episode origin story and should have been a theatrical release. It was great. It confused me as a kid though because, as an origin story, I assumed it must have aired chronologically and I just missed it the first time around. Not so. They just decided to back track a bit in season 2.

I’ve not seen the 2022 Rescue Rangers movie yet. At least, not all of it. Seemed like they’re doing some kind of meta “Chip and Dale are just actors” kind of thing. What I saw seemed funny but was it actually Rescue Rangers? Do we see Monterey or Gadget or Zipper? Or is this just Disney’s answer to Alvin and the Chipmunks? I suppose I should see it through first and THEN speculate.

Also, curious if this is what started the trend to use the word RESCUE in everything marketed to kids. For a while EVERYTHING was rescue this and rescue that. Were kids going crazy over things where other things were rescued from things? Even the third Ninja Turtles video game on the original game boy was called Radical Rescue or something like that. For that title alone I never gave it a chance until it was included in the Cowabunga Collection decades later. I assumed it would be a simple game for toddlers but that gem plays like a metroidvania! It actually was radical. And it rescued me from boredom! Sorry, I’ll see myself out.