On Screen
Alvin and the Chipmunks
BY Philip Brown December 12, 2007 16:12
Did the world actually want a feature-length edition of Alvin and the Chipmunks? Well, it got one anyway. Tim Hill, the auteur behind Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, stepped into the director’s chair to make no one’s dream a reality. The titular trio come to the big screen with a movie as clichéd, idiotic and irritating as one would expect.
Alvin, Simon and Theodore are inadvertently transported from the woods to the big city, where they meet a frustrated songwriter named Dave (Jason Lee). After some predictably zany antics, Dave and the chipmunks form a surrogate family and write the infamous song “Christmas Don’t Be Late.” While it’s a cute idea to show the original story behind the Chipmunk franchise’s initial and most successful creation, the filmmakers don’t seem to know where to go after that. In the second half, the movie deteriorates into a second-rate Josie and the Pussycats as Alvin and The Chipmunks learn the perils of the record industry.
There are many reasons to dislike this movie (the high-pitched versions of pop songs, the failed attempts to make the characters “hip,” the bad CGI, the lack of irony and so on). But, for a comedy fan, the most frustrating aspect is the presence of Lee and David Cross as the human leads. Seeing two major figures of ’90s alternative comedy waiting to cash their Chipmunks cheques is just depressing. I could hear several infants crying during a preview screening packed with children. At times, I wanted to join them.
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