Have any of you watched any of the Chip ‘n’ Dale: Park Life cartoons yet? What are your thoughts?
I initially found the show to be a bit bizarre, but it’s a fun new take on the pair while also returning them to their roots as “troublemakers.”
Haven’t seen it yet.
It’s… interesting. Although I may have made a mistake by starting off with the episode that had the weird licking and them getting stuck together
I enjoyed it. Silly but fun. The early designs were off putting, but the final version is an improvement (though i feel that might have been the reason for delaying its release).
I have this long philosophical essay in my head about how one of the episodes is a religious allegory and I’m not even joking about that.
The episode is The Whole Package and the synopsis is that Chip and Dale needs to get a nutcracker and another chipmunk shows them how to steal packages from a mailbox.
They wait for packages to arrive, but every time one does, it’s something other than a nutcracker. Chip becomes obsessed with getting the nutcracker and wait diligently for packages to arrive while Dale starts finding uses for the items Chip discards, until he has a whole entertainment center to himself. Eventually, the nutcracker actually arrives and the two start fighting about it until the nutcracker breaks apart.
If you take the nutcracker to be a symbol for something like salvation or nirvana and the packages left behind as various life experiences you can have, it becomes kind of this fable about how different people approach spirituality.
There are people like Chip who get really hung up on salvation, not necesserily in a religious way, but this idea of a saviour that’ll come one day with a simple solution to all your problems. Then there are people like Dale who find ways to enjoy what they are given out of life even if it’s not exactly the thing you want.
In my mind, Dale represents magic and spirituality while Chip represents organized religion, but that’s a generalization. There are people in organized religion with more of a Dale attitude and people outside it with more of a Chip attitude. It comes down to the question of if you’re waiting for god or the universe to hand you the solution to everything on a platter or whether you figure that life may not always give you what you want, but if you take the time to appreciate what you have, you often find that it’s given you exactly what you need.
This actually looks really fun and like a great modern take on classic Chip N Dale, I’ll have to check it out.
Have not watched it, but should give it a try.
It looks a bit sugar-rushy from that trailer, but also like the munks are back to their roots in a way.
And Owlor overanalising that one episode really made me want to watch the show, so I can jump onto the overanaliser train, too. 
My gut reaction these days, especially pertaining to media, is to hate anything new. Park Life looked awful like the rest of everything, but I’m glad I watched it because it’s an odd, surprisingly funny show. I’d put it on the level of the Tennant DuckTales.
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@ModernTimes that pretty much sums up my own experience going into it.
Also, did anyone catch this little easter egg?
Yup. Apparently there’s another Rescue Rangers Easter egg somewhere, but I didn’t see it. I think this is just the one.
@TellyToon I think I may have found the other one in a title card from episode 3.
Chip in a bomber jacket.
Good day, and I don’t know if @CD-R would be a fan of Clarice’s appearance in Park Life.
Huh. Would’ve seen that more as a Top Gun reference, but I get ya.
He really needs the hat to pull it off I think. But then it would be too on the nose.
It actually took me an embarrasingly long time ro realize that Clarice was even in this, cus I did not recognize her at first. I wasn’t even able to guess her gender when she showed up, cus that’s a very nonbinary vibe she got going on.
When I actually recognized her, I really enjoyed the update, especially the allusions to her original designs such as the flower-designs shaved into her sideshave. Sometimes I can tell what sort of pointless publicity-generating twitter debate they are trying to generate with a redesign and I’d like to skip to the end of it.
Yeah, she’s not as much of a bombshell as OG-Clarice, she’s probably going to be more appealing if you’re some combination of not-straight and not-guy, but having your one female character exist to be The Sexy One is a bit passé (based on what I saw of her, her thing seem to be The One Who Got Her Shit Together, which brushes up against a more modern brand of gender weirdness where the male characters get to be zany and entertainingly flawed, but the female characters have to be generically Strong Role Models, but that is a whooole other can of worms)
One aspect of the update that I thought was especially funny: Original Clarice was supposed to be the embodiment of “what’s hip” from a 1952 perspective, but based on the fashions of the time, she’s probably around ten years out of date and park life Clarice is supposed to be an embodiment of “what’s hip” from a 2022 perspective, but based on current fashions, she’s probably around ten years out of date.
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This is what Chip n Dale were originally gonna look like.
The show was meant to debut in 2020, but of course was pushed to July 2021. Can’t help but feel this was another Sonic scenario, in which the reactions were negative and Xilam (the animation who worked on the show) had to make some adjustments.
or maybe this was just an early concept.
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That nose…
@Owlor - I really appreciate that analysis of Old and New Clarice. And I agree on her now filling the role of being The One Who Got Her Shit Together, and I feel that makes her a much more interesting character. She sort of has the “tomboy” thing going on (gender non-conforming), which I think this version of Chip ‘n’ Dale need, since they both seem to be more than just a little unhinged.
That said, one of the things that disappoints me about this show is Chip and Dale’s lack of distinct personalities. While the show’s summary describes Chip as a nervous worrier and Dale as a laid-back dreamer (which seems to be very loosely based on their CDRR personalities of “serious business” and "lazy goof-off), their actual behavior in the show doesn’t really line up. Sometimes they’re both hyperactive/ADHD-presenting, or full on maniacal nutjobs, and when they do have personalities, they can be the opposite of how they’d usually be portrayed: Dale being the level headed one, and Chip being the one with a one track mind, so focused on a temptation that he’s unable to see the danger ahead, and needs Dale to come to his rescue and save him from himself, almost like the people writing their stories had never seen a Chip ‘n’ Dale cartoon before. But that changes with each episode.
There just isn’t a whole lot of consistency there, and the way they’re portrayed varies between shorts. The Chip ‘n’ Dale we see in Thou Shall Nut Steal aren’t the same pair we see in the Whole Package, the versions we see in The Baby Whisperer aren’t the same that we see in Acorn in my Side, and the chipmunks in Bird Brains are different than the chipmunks in The Jungle.
But ignoring those discrepancies, it’s a fun and silly show, that I enjoyed watching once I was able to see it from the viewpoint of someone who hadn’t already grown up with different iterations of the 'munks. 
@TellyToon - That image is… cursed. I’m so glad they didn’t go with those designs. Yikes.
Ugh, I cannot get past the animation style. Which is why I can’t get into the new Mickey and Minnie cartoons in general. And don’t get me started on how Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway with the same abismal style replaced the Great Movie Ride at Hollywood Studios…… 
GOOBYPLS. I felt the same way, but then I watched The Baby Whisperer, and suddenly I was able to get past it.
Watch the Baby Whisperer. GOOBYPLS.
Also @Wiggles I just uploaded this clip because it made me laugh and I feel like we tend to laugh at the same things? GOOBY PLS.
Edit:
Also this
GOOBYBABYPLS