It seems like everyone hates the Alvin and the Chipmunks movies. They’re critically reviled and have never received a Rotten Tomatoes score higher than 27%. Their titles are packed with deliberately terrible wordplay like “squeakquel” and “chipwrecked”. Even their stars outwardly hate the films: David Cross went out of his way to tell people not to watch the last one.
But maybe, just maybe, we’re wrong. Sure, people complain that the films trample on their precious childhood memories, but Alvin and the Chipmunks have been aggressively reinvented for new generations since the 1950s. And let’s not forget that people actually love these films. Collectively, they’ve made more than a billion dollars at the box office. Maybe we’ve been the ones missing out by snootily dismissing them. So, with new film Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip on the horizon, it’s time for a reappraisal. Let’s begin with the new trailer.
Right from the start, the Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip trailer utilises much higher production values than we’ve seen before. Sure, it’s just a kids’ film, but they’re trying to make it into a spectacle, and that should be applauded.
Oh, that last image was just a bait-and-switch, designed to grab audiences by the lapels and drag them in? And it’s probably not even in the film? And the real film is actually more like this, with an ugly yellow car aimlessly careering though a lazily composed shot of an anonymous road? That should be applauded, too. Everyone likes a bait-and-switch, don’t they?
And, of course, here’s what all those people paid to see: Alvin, Simon and Theodore clinging on for dear life as an apparently driverless car endangers potentially hundreds of lives at top speed. Any second now, their flimsy grasps could slip, hurling them under the wheels of that silver car behind them. And they’re only chipmunks, so the driver would never even notice that he’d crushed the life out of them. See? This film has stakes. It’s a good film.
“But what about the main purpose of these films?” you ask. And you’d be right. Alvin and the Chipmunks, right from their very inception, have existed purely to sing current pop hits in annoying high-pitched voices. So here we go – in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, Alvin and the Chipmunks sing Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson. And they sing it on top of cars, because this film has the word “road” in its title. Mission accomplished.
Worried that the chipmunks won’t sing Uptown Funk for very long in the film? Don’t be! On the basis of the trailer, they’re going to sing Uptown Funk for a really long time. Like, an unimaginably long time. Just like you wanted them to.
And Bella Thorne is in this film. That’s something that might conceivably make some people happy, isn’t it?
They’re still singing Uptown Funk, by the way. Perhaps this whole film is nothing but the chipmunks chanting the phrase “Uptown Funk” over and over again for hours as they shuffle joylessly from foot to foot on the bonnet of an expensive car, their eyes silently pleading with us to end this misery, however we can. And that’s great! Everyone loves Uptown Funk, don’t they?
Hey, look who else is in this film! It’s that guy from LMFAO. You know, the one who does a pretty amazing job of convincing everyone that he’s the worst person who ever walked the Earth every time he appears in anything. He’s helping Alvin sing Uptown Funk now. Maybe this is purgatory. Maybe this never ends, and we’re all trapped in this collective limbo listening to a relentless helium version of Uptown Funk until we all learn to forgive our enemies. That’s great, too, because it is basically the plot of Lost, and everyone liked that, didn’t they? Everyone liked Lost, everyone likes Uptown Funk and everyone loves Alvin and the Chipmunks. Great job, guys! This film can’t lose! Write yourselves another billion-dollar cheque!
