Alvin and the Chipmunks DVD Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 04.04.2008

It's like watching Glitter. With scat humor.

Directed By: Tim Hill

Starring:
Jason Lee - David Seville
David Cross - Ian Hawke
Justin Long - Alvin (speaking voice)
Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. - Alvin (singing voice)
Matthew Gray Gubler - Simon (speaking voice)
Steve Vining - Simon (singing voice)
Jesse McCartney - Theodore (speaking voice)
Janice Karman - Theodore (singing voice)
Cameron Richardson - Claire Wilson
Jane Lynch - Gail

Domestic Gross: $215,163,603
Worldwide Gross: $351,630,835

DVD Release Date: 4/1/2008
Running Time: 92 minutes



Rated PG for some mild rude humor.

I remember watching the cartoon Alvin and the Chipmunks growing up. There are very fond memories of my childhood, sitting in front of the television and singing along with the opening sequence, enjoying it like much of the cartoons of my youth. At one time, I even wanted to be a singer when I grew up because of it. While not the nearest cartoon to my young heart (that spot went to Transformers and G.I. Joe, it was one I made sure to never miss, and I was hardly alone in that. And, of course, this means Hollywood had to mine this cash-cow, much like Transformers, G.I. Joe, Garfield, Inspector Gadget, Scooby Doo, and boatloads more. And thus we got, in December of last year, this film.

God, I hate Hollywood sometimes.

The Movie

Our story begins a forest one bright day. Three Chipmunks that go by the names of Alvin, Simon and Theodore are packing nuts into a tree while singing Daniel Powter's "Bad Day." Apparently, they can get pretty good radio reception off of those trees. Their tree is cut down and transported to be the Christmas tree at Jett Records, where songwriter David Seville (Lee) just happens to be submitting a demo song to Jett Records executive/sleazeball Ian Hawke (Cross). After being rejected, he steals a muffin basket that the chipmunks hop into while escaping the tree. Now David has three talking chipmunks that wreck his home and foil his plans to woo back his ex (Richardson)...but hey, they can sing. Success comes, but the dastardly Ian wants more money from them. He plots to break Dave away from his newfound charges and work Alvin and company until he's squeezed every last drop from them. Chaos and hilarity ensues.

It's kind of hard to know where to begin with this movie, so I'll start with one of the most important elements; the characterizations of the chipmunks. In this at least, the writers, as well as director Tim Hill, do a fair job. Alvin is the troublemaker who's just a wee bit full of himself; Simon is appropriately smart; and Theodore is a sweet, innocent little butterball. The voice actors, with the help of modern technology, hit all the right notes with them. Unfortunately, this only makes things that much more jarring later in the film when the chipmunks perform, of all things, hip-hop. The CGI is serviceable but ultimately sub-par; the filmmakers can't seem to decide whether they want the chipmunks to be cartoony or real. I would have been fine with either, as long as they made a choice.

In the role of the live-action characters, Jason Lee very much phones in his performance as Dave. Granted, it’s a role that can’t be taken too seriously—we’re talking about a guy who’s a father figure and manager to singing, talking chipmunks, after all. But Lee tries to play it earnestly, and probably would have been better off hamming it up some. He doesn’t anchor the film as much as he wanders aimlessly through it, and even when Dave is spurred into action to save his charges and new pseudo-family, he seems like he’s half-heartedly doing it. David Cross has more fun as the villainous Ian, but the character is too much of a standard, stock caricature that we’ve seen in every musical film from Glitter to Dreamgirls, most of whom have done it better then here (well, maybe not Glitter). Poor Cameron Richardson has little to do as love interest Claire other then provide window dressing and an opening for Dave’s rescue plan to succeed.

This film is, obviously, a family film, and with that comes certain expectations of silliness, missed plot points, and gaps of logic. Yet, Alvin doesn’t seem to understand that family films need to do more then be annoyingly cute. It is cute, don’t get me wrong. But most of the jokes fall utterly flat, and the viewer finds themselves saying “Okay, there was the fart joke. Okay, there was the physical humor.” It’s a going through the motions experience, a process as synthesized as the image and sound the chipmunks rely on. Director Tim Hill, previously responsible for such pap as Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties and Max Keeble's Big Move seems so entrenched in this genre that he doesn't know how to break out of the lines and do something original or noteworthy. He even commits the sin of hubris by throwing in scenes to SpongeBob SquarePants, which he wrote for, no less then three times. Ultimately, as cute as it might be, we have a sub-par family film that somehow made it to the big-time, and the entertainment world is worse off for it.

Oh, and I could have gone without watching Simon eat a rat pellet. Really, thanks Tim.

Film Rating: 4.5

Technical Aspects

Alvin and the Chipmunks is presented as a single "flipper" disc featuring both the fullscreen (1.33:1 aspect ratio) and widescreen formats (1.85:1 aspect ratio). This is a process that always speaks of "cheap treatment" to me, and is probably the first $200 million dollar-plus grossing film to ever receive such a treatment. The video transfer is not a huge deal for this film, and does it's job adequately.

The audio options are English 5.1 Dolby Surround, Spanish and French Dolby Surround, with English and Spanish subtitles. The 5.1 Dolby is good for this kind of a film, as it's a musically-oriented film, and it comes through loud and clear.

Technical Rating: 7.0

Special Features

Much like the "flipper disc" style, Alvin gets a pretty bare-bones treatment when it comes to special features. You would expect that 20th Century Fox would have shelled out for some pretty decent features for such a high-grossing film, but there is nothing to that effect. The features we get are:

Hitting the Harmony: An approximately 8 minute featurette about producing the chipmunk's singing voices. We get to watch the musical talents sing in half-speed (really really slow) in order to make it sound right when played back.

Inside Look at Horton Hears a Who: What boils down to essentially an expanded trailer for the movie that's already out in theaters (even though it's called a "Coming Attraction").

Alvin and the Chipmunks Soundtrack: A commercial for a soundtrack I have no intention of ever hearing, much less buying.

Special Features Rating: 3.0

The 411: Alvin and the Chipmunks's ultimate crime is that it's just neither funny nor interesting. It's light-hearted yes, but in a very false, synthesized way that seems like a paint-by-numbers family film formula. Tim Hill is unable to make anything that is interesting or new, the actors can't lift themselves above the material, and the entire process comes off as annoying and tired. A lack of special features doesn't help what is all in all an utterly mediocre effort.

Final Score:  4.0   [ Poor ]