Review: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

In a year that brought us Coraline, Where the Wild Things Are, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Princess and the Frog, and Up, how can you justify the cosmos of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel as anything inferior than a mind-numbingly generic brand-name change grab? It's a dishonor too, because I candidly same the Chipmunks -- or maybe I liked the Chipmunks. It has been nearly twenty-five eld since I watched them on television (and in their prototypal feature film, The Chipmunk Adventure). Were they ever this boring?

Forcing the Chipmunks to attend an average broad edifice after a discernment of rock and listing superstardom could've prefabricated for a pretty decorous fish-out-of-water comedy (munk-out-of-tree comedy?), but that possibleness is lost in favor of an uninspired effort of the bands story, pitting our boys against an all-girl group of chipmunks titled the Chipettes. The girls, who are also huge Alvin and the Chipmunks fans, have been taken in by a marketer ex-record exec played by king Cross (giving a startlingly self-aware performance), who favors the "sexiest" Chipette Brittany over adorned Jeanette and BBC (Big Beautiful Chipmunk) Eleanor. It's sorta-kinda affecting their overall sisterhood, and that's most as bounteous of a offend as you're feat to get in The Squeakquel.

Jason Lee (as Chipmunk manager-cum-surrogate-father Dave Seville) acquits himself of every this junk by effort scraped in the prototypal fivesome minutes of the flick (spoiler!), fulfilling some contractual obligation he was low and motion the reins over to his man NBC sitcom colleague Zachary Levi. Personally, I institute every six bleating, auto-tuned computer-generated rodents more believable than Levi playing relation Toby Seville, a former broad edifice nerd overturned unemployed video-gaming slacker. Levi's lazy case also completely ruins the impulsive of the group, robbing the rumbustious boys of a beleaguered straight man to endeavor soured of, in invoke robbing them of digit of the rattling things that makes the Chipmunks work.

Will kids modify notice? I conceive so. While there are plentitude of butt-related jokes to attain the tykes feel same they're watching something a lowercase nervy (and they're not, consortium me -- these laughingstock jokes are totally safe for PG), there's not sufficiency creativity or intelligence for anyone to grab on to, no matter the age. At best, The Squeakquel is a ninety-minute onset with likeable cartoon characters (Theodore is ease my favorite after every these years), but its faux-hipness is lost on rattling teen children and already glaringly uncool to slightly senior ones.

Also lost is the honor vocalise cast. I'm not trusty ground you'd lease Christina Applegate, Anna Faris, and Amy Poehler -- every precocious comic actors -- to endeavor the Chipettes, then movement their voices to the point of being unidentifiable and provide them nothing funny to say or do. The boys schedule a lowercase meliorate by at least having crisp personalities -- something the Chipettes aren't presented in this film. (Along with clothes. There are individual weirdly uncomfortable scenes where the Chipettes are totally naked. If you're feat to put clothes on the Chipmunks, ordinary decency dictates that clothes should be required for the girls as well.)

Director Betty Thomas brings nothing to the table but a steadfast dedication to doing everything half-baked. The Squeakquel is littered with personalty impact just passable sufficiency to get the employ done, short-shrifted pop singable numbers, and aggressively edentate comedy. I was glad to wager the boys again, but not in something this dull. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel is sqweak.