Chip 'N Dale director Akiva Schaffer on those pop culture genres he just loves to tweak - The A.V. Club

After helming both music videos (“I’m On A Boat”) and feature films (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) built around simple jokes, it’s no surprise that Disney chose The Lonely Island alum Akiva Schaffer to helm Chip ’N Dale: Rescue Rangers (streaming on Disney+ May 20), a reboot of the detective-buddy-comedy with an absurdly high jokes-per-minute ratio.

AVC: I want to ask about short-form versus long-form storytelling, because I feel like your background is in feature films, of course, but also music videos or sketch comedy videos that are based on one concept.

I don’t know that I ever think of it in those terms, but obviously there are very different rules for a sketch or a music video than there are in a feature.

So when I’m looking at something like this, more than thinking about, like, “How is this different from one of my music videos or a sketch?” I’m more trying to lean into that.

Like, I think you could watch a Lethal Weapon and not really find it funny at all, you know?

So, yeah, trying to get that level of sketch comedy into something like this is always the balancing act.

All the references in the movie, we kind of followed the rule we had with Popstar, which is: Don’t put in a cameo unless it’s forwarding the story or putting a button on a really good laugh.

We’ve got to get Ed Sheeran in the movie.” But, like, it’s our fault for not asking the right questions, so we didn’t get the nugget we needed for the movie!

It has to be forwarding the story or a really good joke that has a point or that’s making some meta thing.

And then I feel like a thief because that’s not my joke.

But as far as I know, I was really trying to be careful never to get somebody else’s laugh that was built into what they had done.

Because that’s their bit, you know what I mean.

[The donuts cops]—I think, in my defense, I overestimated how well people know that detail of Wreck-It Ralph, because to me, as a father of a nine-year-old and 11-year-old, I was like, “Oh, of course, those are great cops, get them in there!” And then there’s people like yourself that probably don’t have kids who go, “Oh, that’s funny, donut cops!” And think it’s my joke.

You know, we didn’t have any problem with that, it’s not like I was putting in PG-13 or R-rated stuff and having to take it out or anything.

AS: I feel like I have a good answer for this that I’m blanking on.

Like a music video of ours where we were like, “That’s our best one, and no one cares.” I mean, we brought up “Jack Sparrow” the other day, which certainly was successful, so it doesn’t fit that thing.

Whereas I feel like sometimes that’s not the case, like you’re saying.

But then in hindsight, I was really proud of it and I was like, Oh, maybe we should have promoted it more?