Reused and Recycled: CHIP 'N DALE: RESCUE RANGERS, DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA, and THE VALET

I prefer movies that plainly recycle old ideas to ones that pretend they’re smarter than that impulse while doing it all the same. Take Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a noisy, flashy, smirking experience that’s ostensibly satirical about the reboot cycle in which we’ve been caught, but is ultimately far emptier than if it just did a remake of the 90s cartoon. The premise is that, in modern day Hollywood, Disney’s animated chipmunks, Chip and Dale, are washed up actors whose glory days in the afternoon sitcom of the title are long behind them. Though they squeaked with the chirping voices of their ilk at the time, now we learn they have the wisecracking tenors of John Mulaney and Andy Samberg. Lo and behold, they get pulled into a detective story when one of their old co-stars is the latest cartoon mysteriously kidnapped. The police on the case, a claymation chief (J.K. Simmons) and his human woman partner (KiKi Layne), imply the animated rodents could help them ferret out some clues. And so the pair dust off their show’s skills for sneaking and rescuing, putting them to the test in their real world. They spelunk through a broad showbiz world, and end up bumping elbows with a handful of winking cameos from brands past and present. Jabs are made, mostly at Disney’s competition, from the weird off-brand dollar-store knockoff cartoons to some particularly nasty remarks directed toward the Paw Patrol. Alas, the mystery itself remains pretty stupid, goosed with creepy sight gags involving erasing beloved characters, is solved quickly, and then just leaves us with a bunch of hurrying around that wears out its welcome before the characters can get to the next clue.

The obvious unflattering point of comparison is Robert Zemeckis’ classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That clever noir revival was chockablock with classic characters in a story that played fair by its genre and its references. It was an actual serious mystery engaged with ideas about the state of studio Hollywood and the history of Los Angeles. It was a toon Chinatown, and every bit as inventive and imaginative and endlessly creative as one would need to be to pull it off, down to the beautifully world-weary Bob Hoskins performance as the live-action man reluctantly pulled into a web of civic and cartoon corruption. That’s better than the only thing on Rescue Rangers’ mind, other than its flat formulaic sleuthing. All it says is, gee, reboots sure are everywhere these days, and sometimes trends in animation are kinda silly. Oh, and friendship is important. It isn’t a modern family film without that. But all the above only gets you so far.

Director Akiva Schaffer, whose previous film with his Lonely Island compatriots was the incisive goof on modern celebrity culture Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, has only a few good gags here. The blending of hand-drawn and CG styles is sometimes appealing, and the parade of winking references is stuffed with surprise appearances by corporate-approved specters from other properties. (The funniest has to be Tim Robinson voicing a rival studio’s infamously poorly-designed character of recent years—so badly received in its first trailer that that film ended up delayed several months to refurbish him.) But the movie is too stupid to even realize that it’d be funnier if it acknowledged Chip and Dale’s 90s show was itself a reboot of the characters from classic Disney shorts. This movie puts them in elementary school together in the 80s, a lazier hit of nostalgia than the deeper, smarter idea so close and yet so far. (It also forgets the movie Return to Neverland happened, which fumbles the villain’s backstory.) That’s what the whole thing’s like, though. It’s a loud, violent, cynical ploy to seem smart, when it’s just a sparkle of borrowed ingenuity that’s cramped and shallow.

After all that mania for naught, the sedate and undemanding Downton Abbey: A New Era is almost welcome. This second feature film extension to the popular soapy British drama is just another jumbo-sized episode stretched out across the big screen. The show’s perspective is still all off—an early-20th-century vision of the idle rich ambling around a palatial estate while their grateful admiring servants busy themselves keeping things running, the two halves joined by mutual appreciation and a penchant for interpersonal dramas that rarely cross the streams. But there’s something seductive to the surface that suggests such a lack of class struggle is possible. This new movie finds the rich folk boating off to the south of France at the behest of a mysterious figure from their matriarch’s past, while a few stay behind to help the help keep track of a film crew that’s paying to use Downton for a month. The two plots toggle back and forth, and the whole thing is done in a bland TV style. A character walks in and makes a pronouncement. Reactions. Establishing shot. More pronouncements. And so on. It’s all a bit tedious.

At least Downton 2 is exceedingly pleasant boredom. One can doze lightly, rousing oneself on occasion to appreciate the comfortable sets, glamorous costumes, and plummy accents. All involved feel quite at home in the proceedings, as they should, especially fan favorite Maggie Smith’s cranky and regal old lady, who gets a truly great final line here. The rest feels cobbled together from borrowed bits, even its own. The characters behave more or less as you’d expect given the circumstances. The French villa is a nice enough postcard landscape. The film crew’s silent movie is suddenly changed to a talkie mid-production, leading to complications that are nothing less than Singin’ in the Rain bits played straighter. Because the whole thing is entirely overfamiliar, there’s nothing much demanding or involving about the watch, which adds to the enjoyable nothing of it all. Maybe people who’ve actually seen the show will feel more satisfaction in it. Weirdly, the closest comparisons to these movies are the original Star Trek films, a TV series continuing in theaters as an excuse to keep a chummy cast and cozy setting rolling along to fans’ delights. If that’s the case, this one’s the Wrath of Kahn to the first’s Motion Picture—now a smaller, more contained picture, concerned mostly with tending the past and explaining its own self-contained plot. It starts mid-stream with new conflicts rising, and ends with a funeral. Bring on Downton Abbey III: The Search for [Spoiler].

A better bit of Hollywood recycling lately is The Valet. It’s a charming-enough high-concept relationship comedy that’s amusing and involving enough on its own that it took me almost twenty minutes to realize it’s loosely based on a fun French farce of the same name from 2006. How’s that for a refurbish? The movie’s about a celebrity (Samara Weaving) having an affair with a married billionaire (Max Greenfield). The couple is photographed by paparazzi, but, lucky for them, a valet (Eugenio Derbez) is in the frame. To deflect suspicion, the glamorous star gets the valet to pretend to be her boyfriend. Easier said than done. The whole thing’s sitcom bright, and, though the antics could be more farcical, the production settles into an easy rhythm. It takes its time characterizing its players, and actually engages with the inherent issues of class and race and Los Angeles’ varied neighborhoods in a low-key perceptive way. And this lets the modest charms rise to the surface. Derbez, especially, is able to play a kind of sturdy decency which allows for a character who we never suspect is doing this for an ulterior motive. Of course he’s confused at first. But soon enough he genuinely wants to help this poor woman, and, when asked how much he’d like to be paid, he offers a sum that’s exactly the amount his ex-wife needs to finish her degree. Nice guy! This decency allows potentially cruel moments—a fancy restaurant full of patrons who assume he’s the waiter—to be pulled off with graceful cleverness. The movie never pushes overmuch on any of its sociological interests—though commentary on discrimination and gentrification are threaded naturally throughout. Instead, it allows the strengths of the performers to guide the scenes to mushy, warm sentiment and a gentle understanding of human fallibility. So it’s less a farce and more a cozy sitcom, but that’s still a perfectly comfortable time at the movies. And that’s not exactly an easy thing to pull off.

Fresh Prince: COMING 2 AMERICA

In 1988, Prince Akeem of the small fictional African nation of Zamunda came to America, hoping to find a wife. It resulted in an amusing-enough culture-clash comedy that benefited from a star turn from Eddie Murphy at the early height of his powers, and the big budget Hollywood gloss that makes any even halfway decent comedy from the days of shooting on film look just a little bit better than the digital non-style style that passes for big screen comedy these days. Now it’s the latest 30-year-old comedy to get a belated sequel in Coming 2 America. Although this time it’s shot bright and flat like a sitcom, returning screenwriters Barry W. Blaustein and David Sheffield (with an assist from Black-ish’s Kenya Barris) have retained the original charms while dialing back some of the raunch and retrograde gender politics. Director Craig Brewer (not for nothing a better director than the original’s John Landis) finds a mellower key for a surprisingly sweet goof that flips the dynamics in clever ways.

It finds Akeem is now King of Zamunda, but without a male heir. In this male-dominated monarchy, that might cause some trouble about lines of succession, even though his hyper-competent and confident daughters are clearly some fine royal specimens capable of leading. For one thing, they’re all excellent fighters — his oldest is even The Old Guard’s KiKi Layne, so you know she can take care of herself. Still, the King’s hopes for a son are answered by the revelation that he fathered a son off-screen during the last movie. Surprise! (His best friend (Arsenio Hall) vaguely remembers the details.) So the movie’s about a thirty-year-old from Queens (Jermaine Fowler), with mom (Leslie Jones) and uncle (Tracy Morgan) in tow, turning up in the palace somewhat ready to claim his place in the royal family. (Some Princess Diaries crash courses might apply.) Though it threatens to become a loud romp, the movie is more interested in a mellow, low-key vibe, letting family dramas just sentimental enough ring out in a comic key surrounded by some good gags, and even a few musical numbers.

The cast keeps it as pleasant as the design of Zamunda — in retrospect a Wakanda spoof avant la lettre — is pleasing to the eye. They’re decked out in Ruth E. Carter’s finest patterns and styles, a little Black Panther here, tribal patterns, flowing fabrics, and elaborate jewelry there. That these comic performers carry out their silly little bits of business and amusing patter in this stunning wardrobe adds to the charms. Above all, it’s nice to see Murphy back in a comedy that plays to his strengths. It’s a perfect blend of the wilder energy of his early roles and the gentler family fare he aged into. There’s some impish sparkle in his eyes (especially in his under-makeup multiple roles reprising the barbershop jokesters from the first film), and a comfortable fatherly cuddliness to his paternal interests in the plot. And it’s poignant to see his dawning awareness of a need to push back on the patriarchy that forces him to ignore his wonderful daughters in favor of a son he barely knows. Yet best of all, perhaps, is his willingness to cede some of the spotlight to Fowler’s Prince Lavelle Junson of Queens, an appealing performance that’s in a slightly different register from Akeem. He plays the culture clash here, bringing a New York swagger to the formality of the palace. He gets a more earnest rom-com plot as he’s torn between a stunning princess (Teyana Taylor) from neighboring country Nexdoria (maybe too lightly treated for being run by a peacocking warlord (a game, energetically goofy Wesley Snipes) and his child soldiers), a match that might make good political sense, and a more relatable court stylist (Nomzamo Mbatha), who might be better for him personally. It's serious, but cute.

The whole picture is uneven, with some jokes flat and a few conceits a tad under-cooked, but the project has enough charms that I found it hard to resist. Brewer keeps the tone on track, with the simple sitcom staging inviting enough emotional investment without stamping out laughs, which in turn keep the more serious geopolitical allusions at bay. This is a character piece, not a world building endeavor or cultural argument beyond the softly insistent gender balancing. The ensemble is on the same chill wavelength, resisting overt farce for something more relaxed, an amusing and amiable consideration of generational conflict wrapped up in semi-serious stakes for this never-quite-believable kingdom. It honors the original in its throwback appeal—a reminder of a time when a movie could be a couple good star turns, some funny supporting roles, and a simple high concept executed well enough.

Live, Die, Repeat: THE OLD GUARD

For a comic book action film, The Old Guard keeps its scale smaller than you’d expect, the better to remain atypically attuned to its characters and the consequences of their actions. Adapted by Greg Rucka from his own comic book, the screenplay about a quartet of immortal warriors is relatively down-to-earth for its outlandish premise. The tone is set early when we see Charlize Theron, as the haunted leader of the group, gunned down, contemplating if this is the time she dies. Smartly, the movie knows we might not care if invulnerable characters get hurt, and so makes them vulnerable in other ways. For one, we’re told that at some point, centuries in, they won’t wake back up after a fatal blow. They just don’t know where and when. Worse, they’re not exactly dreading that day. After hundreds of years alive, doing great violence at little physical cost, the psychological cost is weighing on them. Not to mention having to see humanity’s patterns of ugliness cycle again and again. Theron, taciturn and chilled, seems particularly worn down by this. She and the others (Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, and Luca Marinelli) want to fight for justice, to make the world a better place. But one look at the news, and Theron wonders if all their fighting has actually made a difference.

Among these characters, there’s this palpable sadness and boredom with their long lives and strange powers; they’ve been there, done that. One spark of life comes from a potential new recruit (KiKi Layne), a solider who survives a surely fatal cut to the neck and starts communicating psychic visions with our lead quartet. That it's all new to her, giving her reluctance a different flavor, is a good contrast. When she marvels at their unflinching violence meted out against bad guys, she’s told Theron has “forgotten more about killing than entire armies will ever learn.” And yet, for all the action — blood and bullets spraying freely, at least when there’s not a battle ax around to do the job — the movie dreads it. How terrible that it has become old hat. How hard it is for our heroes to think all they’ve done is ultimately to little effect. Their newest member looks upon all this and wonders if she could ever be like them. After all, spectacular violence may come easy, but living with it is difficult. Credit for this unusual sensitivity to the effects of comic book violence surely goes to director Gina Prince-Bythewood. Up to now, she’s blessed us with warm, sensitive dramas like Love & Basketball and Beyond the Lights, beautiful, romantic movies closely attuned to their characters emotions, every catch of breath, or shift of gaze. Here death may be old hat to her heroes, but it’s no laughing matter to the filmmaking. Every gun shot or blade slice hurts, even when it seals back up in time to keep the fight moving. She weaves in some horrific concepts in their backstories, and is keenly aware of how much they can lose in the present.

And yet the genre has its demands. The central action conflict of the film comes when an evil pharmaceutical company — led by a callow young tech (Harry Melling) — hires an investigator (Chiwetel Ejiofor) to capture these ageless warriors and drain them for research. That explains the waves of armored goons arriving periodically, and sets up a few fine set-pieces. But it all comes back to that mood, so well sustained throughout. Sure, the dialogue is frosty pulp, with a few terse one-liners sprinkled throughout. And the world it sets up has its intrigue. But it’s not in a hurry to balloon to apocalyptic stakes. Instead it sits with these characters and understands their reluctance, their pain, their confusion. It thinks somberly about the toll it takes to kill and be killed over and over and over. Sure, it’ll slay the bad guys with some style and choreography. But it’s committed to a low minor-key and small, contained sequences. In true modern comic book movie fashion, it sets up more than it knocks down, and even has a little teaser of a scene before the end credits that promises a sequel could be bigger, wilder, and deeper. What does feel complete is Prince-Bythewood’s vision, which extends her sense of thoughtful interiority to a genre that often lacks it.