To celebrate the release of the live-action Chipmunks movie starring Jason Lee and irritating kids everywhere, Paramount has decided to release two old Chipmunks DVDs from the 90s. One is called Alvin and the Chipmunks Go To The Movies, where the three chipmunks do Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Back To The Future, and Big. The other is called Chipmunk Adventure, where the chipmunks compete against girl chipmunks in a hot-air balloon race around the world. By the way, why are the guy chipmunks called The Chipmunks, and the girl chipmunks are called The Chippettes? I did a quick wikipedia search here - the correct name for female chipmunks is “female chipmunks”. These shows are basically sitcoms, with irritating characters and obnoxious father figures. The Chipmunks, much like every other cartoon in the 80s, were a rock band. Somehow these songs made it onto CDs in the 80s, despite the fact that they sucked and were more unintelligible than Stevie Nicks.
How can you watch a show where you can’t understand a word the characters are saying? The Chipmunks are three young cartoons who talk as though they are premanently crammed full of helium, but would likely have problems with pronunciation and diction even if they had normal voices. Sit-coms sucked enough already in the 80s, why would the world have forced this crap on kids? The Chipmunks talk incredibly slowly. There appears to be only about eleven lines of dialogue in each 22-minute episode, and yet you still can’t understand them. I watched 66 minutes worth, squirming angrily, and then I shut it off. Now the kids are here, and I am going to be forced to watch the new movie. Oh no.
OK. Watched the new movie. It is better than the incredibly bad old episodes, but that isn’t saying too much. Jason Lee, you see, is a struggling, go-nowhere musician and songwriter, who is still somehow able to own a big, wonderful house in the suburbs. The chipmunks, Alvin Simon and Theodore, through a series of bizarre occurences, end up in his house. These chipmunks are kind of like a girl, who comes to your house on the first date, and within three hours believes she has moved in there, and that she is your girlfriend, and then never leaves because if she did you might change your locks. They take over the house, and when he lets them stay, they immediately start calling themselves a “family”, which understandably freaks him out. Why does Jason Lee keep taking these roles? He does My Name Is Earl, and he was great in all of those Kevin Smith movies, but now he’s doing this, and Underdog. Maybe it’s that these roles require almost not acting at all, and he certainly doesn’t look as though he’s trying here.
And what’s with cartoon characters not wearing pants? They’re freaky because they’re naked, decides their producer, David Cross. So…they get SHIRTS knitted. They are still pantsless! Cross does add a nice touch to this movie, which is pretty well a by-the numbers kids’ film. It even has that requisite scene where someone gives the chipmunks - oh my go - COFFEE! And they go NUTS, bouncing off the walls…this is the most cliched and obnoxious scene in all kids movies now. It should be banned altogether. The best thing about the movie over the episodes is that you can understand what the chipmunks are saying without straining yourself. Except during the songs. Which are as awful as ever. Generic, mindless kids’ entertainment, but at least some people are trying a little bit. More than I can say for most kids’ movies, this gets a five.