Monday 26 December 2011

Alvin and the Chipmunks

For someone who is heavily into movies, I do have some glaring gaps in terms of movies seen. So when Alvin came up with his 3rd movie, I was left in a situation where I consciously decided not to go because I had not seen the 2007 movie or the Squeakel as it was called in 2009. That the franchise has survived upto its 3rd movie is credit to the marketing brains behind the scenes is all I can see. Thanks to Movies Now, I got the opportunity to watch a movie that I haven’t seen before – a rarity on movie channels over the past few weeks (gets immensely boring at times). So on a lazy Sunday afternoon, after a good 10+ hours of sleep on Saturday night, I was quite pleased when I bumped into Alvin on the movie listings. However, my Sunday wasn’t too great with respect to movies. In fact the entire weekend was quite below par with the movies released and on offer on channels . Thank goodness it was quite good in all other aspects.
Alvin (Justin Long), Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) and Theodore (Jesse McCartney) are 3 chipmunks who are… how do we put it…. Musically inclined. They live in a tree farm somewhere and find themselves transported from wherever they are to Los Angeles where they eventually bump into a song writer Dave Seville (Jason Lee). Now Dave isn’t doing too well with his mushy music and Ian (David Cross) who owns Jett Records thinks that Dave is done and dusted with his music career. The chipmunks find residence in a fruit basket that Dave forcibly takes away from Ian’s office. It takes a while for Dave to find them out and after a bit of resistance and identification of music potential, he takes them in. Things start going out of hand when Ian discovers the munks and turns them into overnight celebrities. Can the kids – as Dave calls them – manage the sudden burst of fame and success?

It is strange to see the success that Alvin has achievement over the years. It is at best an average franchise. The story line is nothing great – if anything it gets all too gooey and mushy for anyone’s comfort. The animation is barely average. The movies have never been rated highly by any critic or not so critical reviewers. It has offered nothing “new” per se for people to be excited about – I mean Chip ‘n Dale were much more fun. The voice overs could have been done by anyone using the right technology. The cast has to really force itself to act. Tim Hill’s direction is average at best (Whats the verdict on Hop by the way? Hasn’t released in this part of the world yet. Not expecting much after this.). Overall – not too great a way to start a Sunday afternoon. Kids would probably love it to bits – which would explain the success. Adults – worth a miss – 4 on 10.

Watch the trailer at http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi984744217/

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