Review of “Alvin and the Chipmunks”
Fashion is a funny thing. Flouro came back last year, when I thought we’d safely kissed it goodbye in the late eighties. The Spice Girls are back, as is Dannii Minogue, looking strangely better than ever. As a culture, we are endlessly recycling the past. But which tired old studio executive thought it would be a good idea to revive Alvin and the Chipmunks for the new millennia?
Alvin and the Chipmunks are a gimmick record that never went away. In 1958 songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, who made his first million with the song Witch Doctor (of the deeply subtextual lyric “ting tang walla walla bing bang”) was looking for something else he could use the double-speed function on his tape recorder for. Seriously. He saw a chipmunk while on holidays, and was inspired to invent Alvin. Several million album sales, two cartoon series, and almost 50 years later, they’re back, in a big budget CGI and live action film directed by Tim Hill (director of Muppets from Space).
Let me put this in historical perspective – going to see this film is the equivalent of going to see Crazy Frog Ringtone – The Movie. Don’t laugh, I am sure that is on somebody’s story idea board somewhere. But I digress. In this film, Jason Lee (from My Name is Earl – I hope he bought himself a nice holiday house with the money from this) plays Dave, a struggling songwriter, who takes in three chipmunks whose home is cut down to become a Christmas tree. Discovering his new friends can sing and dance, he writes a number for them and they become instant superstars. Even at my most cynical, I can’t deny the cuteness factor of Alvin, Simon and Theodore. Decked out in Beastie Boys threads, and voiced by teen heart-throbs Justin Long, Jessie McCartney and Matthew Gray Gubler (who?), they are suitably cheeky to get good laughs from your kids. And who doesn’t love a good bit of scatological humour?
The animation is fine, from some of the team behind Ice Age, though not up to the quality of the critters in Golden Compass.
Not a lot actually happens in the film, with maybe 30 minutes worth of plot stretched to the 90 minute running time. There are a few in-jokes, a few good digs at the music industry and at other cartoons, but this is no Shrek, No Ice Age, and definitely no Toy Story. But getting kids out of the house and momentarily diverted is, I know, often of far more importance than integrity, and they could be doing much worse than laughing at the occasional poo joke in comfortable air-conditioning.
CK
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