Actor David Cross, who plays Ian the evil music producer in the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” series, said recently that working on “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” – was the most painful experience of his professional career. All I can say is – David, I feel you – because watching “Chipwrecked” was one of the most painful experiences of my professional career as a critic.
Jason Lee (who starred in the 2007 original but only made a brief appearance in the 2009 sequel) is back as David Seville. As the movie begins he is taking the three chipmunks and the three chipettes on a vacation cruise. Of course it doesn’t take long before things get out of control on the ship, thanks mostly to Alvin. The six squeaky furballs end-up stranded on what they think is a deserted island and they have to learn how to take care of themselves while they wait to be rescued. Along the way they deal with a wacky treasure hunter, a spider bite that turns Simon into a French adventurer and a volcano that’s set to destroy the island. It’s all completely ridiculous.
While sitting through “Chipwrecked” I thought back to the 2007 original “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, and how much fun that film was: the clever story and dialogue and the impressive way the chipmunks interacted with the human characters. 2009’s “Squeakquel” was not as good, but still passable. But this is a total mess. I smiled two or three times during the (thankfully short) 87 minutes – that’s it. Director Mike Mitchell goes from making the final chapter in the Shrek series (last year’s very good “Shrek Forever After”) to ending the Chipmunks franchise (we can only hope).
“Chipwrecked” is filled with musical numbers – the chipmunks ruining several current pop songs. Studio executives clearly hoping to sell some soundtrack CD’s because they know they’re not going to sell a lot of movie tickets. The CGI work on the chipmunks is surprisingly poor and at times it’s difficult to understand what the chipmunks are saying.
You can only wonder what brought Jason Lee back, besides a paycheck. And it’s no surprise that Cross didn’t have a good time during production. He spends almost the entire movie in a pelican costume.
“Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” is the first in the series to be rated G (the others were PG). There’s nothing offensive in the movie – except that the entire movie is offensive to anyone looking to have a good time. I guess very young kids who liked the other two might enjoy the adventure, but, trust me, even they will be disappointed.
On “The Official Kid Critic Report Card“, “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” gets a D.
And in case you’re wondering why I didn’t mention anything about a shipwreck in this review, it’s because there isn’t one in the film. The writers apparently thought “Chipwrecked” was a clever name so they went with it even though it doesn’t apply to anything in the story. Too bad they didn’t spend more time coming-up with a clever script.