The Movie:

Remember when it was cool to see Jason Lee on the big screen? Remember that edgy, sarcastic whit that directors like Kevin Smith and Cameron Crowe extracted from him? Ever since the comedic actor moved into the world of sitcoms, not only has his hard style seemed to have all but disappeared, hw has lost the ability to pick out good scripts too. The ultimate catastrophe his name is attached to is not your average feature film, rather it is a two-hour advertisement in the form of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

When David Saville’s music career starts to take a turn for the worse, the songwriter serendipitously encounters three singing chipmunks, Alvin, Simon and Theodore. Developing a familial relationship with the anthropomorphic rodents, David must help keep his unorthodox family unit together from the threat of superficial record producer, Ian Hawke.

Aside from the clever pun the plot pays on a “Hawke” swooping up little chipmunks, the remainder of Alvin’s jump to live action cinema is about as hollow and generic as they come. The film moves at such a breakneck pace that even sugar riddled youngsters might have a hard time keeping up with the story, even at its most oversimplified.

Even more disappointing than finding out that Jason Lee doesn’t follow in the footsteps of series creator Ross Bagdasarian, who originally played Saville, in voicing the actual chipmunks, is the film’s heavy emphasis on music over story. It’s as if millions of dollars was poured into a narrative that exists solely to advertise the soundtrack, and hopefully, a new generation of Chipmunk’s albums.

2/10

Special Features:

The dual layered DVD comes with twice as much Chipmunk action, including both wide and full screen versions of the film. While the disc looks and sounds great, even the special features included on the disc serve to advertise the soundtrack, sans one truly great documentary.

Aside from a surprisingly large amount of behind the scenes looks at other Fox family pieces, “Hitting the Harmony”, doesn’t offer up any interesting behind the scenes tidbits on Alvin and the Chipmunks. Instead the segment focuses on something that has long been known to fans of the Chipmunks, how their squeaky voices are created. While it would have been nice to see how the computer-animated rodents were integrated into a live action environment, the segment mainly focuses on how great the soundtrack is. A commercial for the album, immediately following ”Hitting the Harmony”, only further cements the idea that the film exists solely to sell a product.

Luckily for the DVD, “Chip-Chip-Hooray! A Chipmunk History” is a fantastic documentary on the creation and evolution of these furry cultural icons. For nostalgias sake, the segment serves to remind audiences that there is indeed a good Chipmunk movie to be made, even if it wasn’t the one included on this DVD.

4/10

Overall:

To paraphrase Fox Home Entertainment’s “Get ‘Munked” catch phrase, let’s say “Munk this DVD”. Looks like we’ll have to stick with the fantastic animated Chipmunk Adventure to get our cinematic Alvin fix.

- Joe Russo