movie film review | chris tookey
 
     
     
 

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

 (U)
© 20th Century Fox - all rights reserved
     
  Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked Review
Tookey's Rating
2 /10
 
Average Rating
3.00 /10
 
Starring
Jason Lee , David Cross, Jenny Slate . Voices: Justin Long
Full Cast >
 

Directed by: Mike Mitchell
Written by: Jonathan Aibel, Glenn Berger based on characters created by Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karman

 
Tookey's Review
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Cast
 
 
Released: 2011
   
Genre: SERIES
ANIMATION & LIVE ACTION
SEQUEL
FAMILY
COMEDY
   
Origin: US
   
Colour: C
   
Length: 85
 
 


 
All washed up.
Reviewed by Chris Tookey



Real chipmunks prey on frogs, worms and baby birds, and sleep for about 15 hours a day. So they know when to shut up and, best of all, they don’t sing, dance or babble incomprehensibly at the top of their voices. They are, therefore, not to be confused with Alvin and the Chipmunks, who are about to infest your local cinema.

Yes, the voluble vermin are back. As if Alvin, Simon and Theodore aren’t high-pitched enough, they’re accompanied by the even screechier Chipettes and of course their prat-falling manager Dave (Jason Lee, pictured with the Chipettes). He looks throughout as though he wishes someone would shoot him and put him out of his misery.

We’re supposed to believe Alvin and co are pop stars, and after the last series of X Factor I suppose anything’s possible. All the same, sensitive musical souls may need to undergo years of therapy after witnessing the Chipmunks and Chipettes perform Lady Ga Ga’s Born This Way while trampolining.

This time, they go on an ocean cruise and are marooned on a volcanic island, where they encounter a crazy treasure-hunter (Janet Slate, who overacts like the worst kind of children’s TV presenter). She talks to balls, like Tom Hanks did in Cast Away. This movie in-joke is, I suppose, aimed at any adults who have not yet fallen asleep or run screaming from the cinema.

Doubtless because Alvin and co’s musical stylings are so evocative of Jedward in their prime, I found my mind wandering during the long hours of boredom to their mentor, X Factor judge Louis Walsh, and his recent, ?30,000 pound hair transplant. Do you suppose he tells his new hair “You were BORN to be on that head?” Does he stare into the mirror and yell “Louis, you’ve made that hair YOUR OWN”?

But I digress. This shameless cash-grab by 20th Century Fox – it would be charitable to assume the movie was greenlit by senior executives who didn’t read the panicky emails warning them about the script - isn’t aimed at critics, or people who read film reviews.

Devoid of wit or any semblance of ambition or originality, it is aimed at the pre-literate mini-consumers who enabled the film’s two predecessors to gross a thoroughly undeserved 800 million dollars.
Three-to-four year-olds will love it, and there’s a lot of them about.


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