For nearly 50 years, in various incarnations on the small
screen and in other forms of media, lively chipmunks Alvin, Simon and Theodore have
been delighting young audiences around the world, wreaking havoc upon the house
and possessions of their caretaker, Dave Seville, and crooning in distinctively
high-pitched, three-part harmonies. From the moment they sprung into being, the
creative brainchild of singer/songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, Sr., the chipmunks’
catchy sound has been a strange yet consistent pop cultural mainstay. Now, a
colorful but uninspired CGI/live-action hybrid film of the same name seeks to capitalize
on that dormant franchise power.

After the tree that is their home gets cut down for a
Christmas decoration, three chipmunks — rascally, impetuous Alvin, bespectacled voice-of-conscience
Simon and tubby, friendly Theodore — take up residence with frustrated, aspirant
songwriter Dave Seville (Jason Lee). Dave’s life is a wreck; his girlfriend
Claire (Cameron Richardson) recently left him, and he’s struggling to come up
with a hit for his demanding agent, Ian (David Cross).

At first thrown for a loop when he finds the trio in his
house, Dave catches the chipmunks and tosses them out. He changes his tune,
however, when he discovers that Alvin and the gang can carry a tune of their
own, so he strikes a professional deal with them: he’ll write the music, and they’ll
sing for their supper. Soon, tangentially inspired by their unintentionally
destructive antics, Dave has that elusive hit song — a Christmas-themed ditty
that launches Alvin and the
Chipmunks into the pop stratosphere. As Ian peddles the perks of stardom to his
new clients, Dave labors to convince them that he has their best interests at
heart, and awakens to the notion of a new surrogate family.

Director Tim Hill (Muppets
from Space, Garfield: A Tail of Two
Kitties) delivers streamlined, inoffensive and unmemorable work — a movie
full of pat set-ups and close-ups. The script, cobbled together from drafts by The Simpsons veteran scribe Jon Vitti
and Will McRobb & Chris Viscardi, is a desultory affair that seems to conform
to the notion that children’s films don’t require quite as much creative heavy
lifting. Littered with wan jokes that seem like placeholders for future
revisions, the story seems chiefly constructed from a checklist of narrative
elements associated with the characters (toaster waffles, paper airplanes, a
remote control car), all designed to elicit Dave’s signature exhortation of
exasperation (“Alvvvvin!”).

There’s no explication of why the chipmunks sing, and while
Dave originally expresses understandable bewilderment that Alvin and the gang
can even talk, this isn’t addressed in the context of the group’s meteoric rise
up the pop music charts. The film instead relies on the convenience of zippy
montages here, which makes the notion that the audience then instantly turns on
the chipmunks when they’re revealed to have been lip-synching at a concert all
the more ridiculous. Musical bits, obviously a big part of the characters’ entire
appeal, give the movie a bit of fleeting pop here and there, but there also
seems a lot of wasted comedic opportunity in terms of the chipmunks’ nesting
and acclimation to their new human surroundings.

The film’s glossy CGI production value is decent and
certainly of a piece with the intended demographic — Alvin, Simon and Theodore
look suitably cuddly and appealing — yet also irrevocably hamstrung by problems
of consistency with regards to size and perspective. Sometimes the chipmunks
are the size of a coffee cup, sometimes as big as Dave’s head. Disney’s recent
hit Enchanted, which also featured a
talking chipmunk integrated with human characters, handles these issues with
much more grace and panache. For the full original review, from Screen International, click here.