Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

I’d say “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” is the best of the series so far; don’t get your hopes up, though, suffering parents – it’s still a load of old poppycock. I should make it clear that by “best” I mean “most bearable,” as in “least likely to make you want to stick a screwdriver in your ear canal” – I suppose this is the most you could possibly hope for out of a family-friendly film franchise about all singing, all dancing, computer-generated chipmunks. Now, I’m not saying you won’t ever have the desire to take a little stab or two at your poor, suffering eardrums whilst enduring “Chipwrecked” (you very well could and probably will), I’m just saying the desire to self-mutilate may not crop up quite as much as you may anticipate – maybe only every ten or fifteen minutes will you be eyeing your trusty screwdriver.

This second squeakquel sees the all singing, all dancing CGI critters becoming hopelessly and helplessly stranded on a remote tropical island – well, that’s a pretty good start. This is following an unfortunate paragliding incident on the grand cruise ship that was supposed to take the chipmunks and chipettes to the International Music Awards. Instead, they’re starving to death and slowly losing their tiny little minds on an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere, yet still they sing their crushable little lungs out – hooray!

Meanwhile, the chipmunks’ human owner/companion/whatever Dave (Jason Lee, “My Name is Earl”) has, unbeknownst to the chipmunks, become stranded on the other side of the same island after attempting to find his furry friends. Joining him on his search for the “chipwrecked” chipmunks is the previously villainous Ian (David Cross, “Megamind”), who spends the entire movie dressed in a pelican costume – looks like someone managed to majorly piss off the writers, eh, Cross?

What this rather unimaginative plot means is that the chipmunks spend much of the film on their own, i.e. clunky human-chipmunk interaction is kept to a minimum; this is a merciful plus. You see, it’s the scenes featuring the chipmunks and the chipmunks alone that are the most bearable; you’d think it’d be the opposite, but badly written dialogue means that any and all scenes featuring living, breathing human beings are irritatingly unnatural – with computer-animated rodents, this is not so much of a problem. Plus, poor Jason Lee and David Cross, two very talented comedic actors, are little more than pictures of disinterest and embarrassment by this point – they no longer give a squeak, I suppose you could say.

In all honesty, I don’t really mind the chipmunk characters; they’re amusing enough and the original three at least have notable personalities. We have high-spirited leader Alvin (voiced by Justin Long), bespectacled brainbox Simon (voiced by Matthew Gray Gubler) and chubby doofus Theodore (voiced by Jesse McCartney). We also have the Chipettes, the three female chipmunks introduced in 2009’s “squeakquel.” These are high-spirited leader Brittany (voiced by Christina Applegate), bespectacled brainbox Jeanette (voiced by Anna Faris) and chubby doofus Eleanor (voiced by Amy Poehler) – they’re essentially what the original chipmunks would look like if they were to each undergo a sex change.

None of the uselessly A-list voice-actors do any of the singing, of course; that’s left to the professionals. The singing is near-constant, providing pointless musical interludes as the chipmunks belt out all the current, soon-to-be-forgotten pop tunes in their squeaky little voices, sometimes in acapella, sometimes with the support of the original music. We have everything from Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” as well as a tremendously witty reworking of a Willow Smith song: “Whip My Tail Back and Forth.” The soundtrack shall sell well, I assume, and drive parents up the friggin’ wall.

As well as a barrage of pop tunes, we have a never-ending slew of pop culture references. There’s a nudge to Robert Zemeckis’ “Cast Away:” Zoe (Jenny Slate), a crazy castaway whom the chipmunks encounter, has several friends in the form of footballs with faces painted on. There’s a nudge to William Golding’s classic book “Lord of the Flies:” Simon uses the lens of his glasses to light a fire (though I suspect this will go over the heads of many). And then there’s a very outdated nudge to Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy: at one point, Eleanor, while holding a mango she finds, cries out, “My preciousss” in the unmistakable style of Gollum. Now that’s comedy!

Speaking of comedy, this film has none, or at least none in the funny section. It lazily strives for funniness and never quite manages to reach it, resulting in a wholly laughless affair that suffers from the belief that the sight and sound of singing, dancing, squeaky-voiced chipmunks is enough to entertain and distract an audience for 80 minutes; I assure you, dear filmmakers, it most certainly is not, especially when we’ve already endured it two times before.

Look, if you, for whatever reason, found any enjoyment in either of this film’s predecessors, then you may once again find enjoyment in “Chipwrecked.” For those of you who didn’t, I’d advise you to avoid “Chipwrecked” as if it were a rabies-infected chipmunk. As predicted by most, it’s clinically hollow-minded, painstakingly unfunny and a laborious chore to sit through. Most people over the age of five shall gain absolutely nothing from it; those under the age of five (i.e. stupid kids) will have a whale of a time.

4/10