‘Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers’ movie is not the traditional Disney fare

For ‘Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers’ screenwriters, Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, working on this movie was not only great but the story line about friendship was very personal to the long time friends.

“This movie, in its own sort of weird backwards way is a very personal story to us about like, friends who, you know, work together and all of the tensions and complications that go into having a professional relationship with your best friend. And, what it’s like to maintain those friendships over a long time,” said Gregor, who met Mand in college and together started a sketch group and have been “making stuff together” since then.

In ‘Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,’ Chip and Dale are living among 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 canceled, and Chip (voice of John Mulaney) has succumbed to a life of suburban domesticity as an insurance salesman. Dale (voice of Andy Sandberg), meanwhile, has had CGI surgery and works the nostalgia convention circuit, desperate to relive his glory days.

When a former cast mate 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.

“You know, Doug, and I have not had a friend kidnapped that we have to find, but the emotional part of the movie is very real to us,” said Gregor, who is a writer, director and producer.

When asked who would be Chip and who would be Dale in their real life friendship, Gregor said “I wish I was Chip but I’m not.”

“I think that we’re, well, I don’t know,” said the highly-successful TV and film writer and producer Mand. “I wish I was more like Dale sometimes too. I don’t know. I think I am probably Chip and Dan is probably Dale but, not down the middle. I don’t think.”

“We both wear pants,” joked Gregor and Mand, who have written features films for Disney, Universal, Paramount Studios, MGM, and STX.

Mand co-wrote and starred in the film ‘Most Likely to Murder,’ which was directed by Gregor and premiered at SXSW before being purchased by Lionsgate and Hulu.

Mand said not only the new Chip ‘N Dale movie, which is already streaming on Disney+ will take people to a “fun ride of going down memory lane” but at its core it’s a movie about two lifelong friends who have gone their separate ways but come back together for a common goal and being honest about their feelings of becoming friends again.

“This is about lifelong friends who need to refine themselves and both need to admit where they went wrong in so that they can move forward in a healthy way and in a way that is more fulfilling than pretending the other didn’t exist,” said Mand who most recently co-created the series ‘Pretty Smart’ for Netflix.

The most fun and most challenging parts of working on the movie for the duo of screenwriters was the “world creation,” said Gregor, who is currently writing a Christmas musical starring Rachel Bloom and produced by Paul Feig for Amazon.

“This is a very weird, specific world of well, what happens if cartoons were real people and their actors living in Los Angeles?” said Gregor, adding that every time they walked into a new location, or situation in this world, they had to have the really fun challenge of of answering all those questions.

“That’s that goes from, what does it like to be a six inch person living in Los Angeles? How do you go about your day? What do you drive, where do you live? But also, you know, asking ourselves, what kind of neighborhoods do old cartoons live in if they have specific types of neighborhoods?” said Gregor. “It’s a really fun sort of mental challenge, to sort of have to answer how this world makes sense.”

“We really kept getting a kick out of out of answering all those questions. And so that was both the most most fun and the most challenging part was just like hopefully not letting anything in the movie feel straight. It just always had to be a twist,” said Gregor, whose past credits include writing, directing, producing and a recurring role on CW’s “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.”

While the screenwriters are very self aware of the larger Disney catalog, Gregor said that for people who are fan of the Disney movie, but also “like to sort of pier behind the curtain and take a take a little more comedic, satirical look at what it means to be a Disney movie. I think this movie will be a really fun opportunity for viewers to do that.”

Mand said what they went for “a movie that hopefully plays to children all the way to adults” where there is something for everyone – the adorable and fun to watch Chip and Dale for younger kids as well as reference that some adults will get.

“So we’re hoping that this is the kind of movie that everyone can get on the couch with, have some popcorn and just like and laugh and kind of share with your your children in a way that you don’t always get to do,” Mand said. “Hopefully, this movie is something where everyone can sit and laugh and feel some kind of positive emotions to the same piece of a Disney work.”

“Especially it’s for 30 year old children with their 60 year old parents,” Gregor added. “Enjoy the weird movie of it. It’s definitely meant to be a strange mystery. As you know, not the traditional Disney fair.”