Yeah, it’s pretty much as bad as you’d expect. I came across a four-star review of this movie a few days ago and thought that maybe there could be an element of this movie that could work, that it could be surprisingly entertaining and fun. There’s one 20-minute section toward the beginning of the movie that is surprisingly tolerable, and I thought that it was possible the movie could redeem itself from months of astonishingly horrible, bang-your-head-against-the-door-until-you-die kind of advertising that only a blind man and his deaf younger sister could love. Alas, a stupid “crisis” occurs and the movie becomes as headache-inducing as the ads promised. This movie made me ache with pain by the final half-hour.

So we learn in the beginning that the three chipmunks spend their days in a forest singing contemporary tunes like Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day,” and stuffing acorns in tall trees.One of the trees they’re dancing around in gets cut down suddenly and sent into downtown L.A. to be put up as a Christmas tree. The three chipmunks escape and find themselves in the bag (or muffin basket, don’t ask) of Dave (Jason Lee), whose newest demo track has been turned down yet again by a millionaire producer (a really annoying David Cross). Lo and behold, the chipmunks can sing! Yay! They can help Dave make it big. But first, of course, Dave has to discover that these three chipmunks talk, which surprisingly doesn’t weird him out as much as you might think .

This leads me to the first real problem I had with the movie. I know when you go and watch a live-action kid movie called Alvin and the Chipmunks, all logic should be put aside. But nobody throughout the film really questions the fact that suddenly, magically, there are three rodents who can speak… and sing! In the second half, the chipmunks become big music stars and put on concerts, where various kids and teenagers come out to see the “amazing” trio sing their pants (errr shirts) off to bland pop songs. The whole time I’m just thinking to myself, if there were three rodents in the world who could suddenly talk, they wouldn’t be head-lining a concert somewhere, they’d be getting examines and inspected by government agents somewhere in the proximity of Area 51. Furthermore, even if I could get past this obstacle, I couldn’t understand why older teenagers would go to a concert with singing chipmunks. There are shots of men and women who look like they’re 25, rocking out to these songs. Huh?

(Okay, and just on a side note. And this really is a side note. Why, oh why, did actual known actors like Justin Long and Jesse McCartney provide the voices to the chipmunks, when their voices are sped up in a way that the real guys could never be recognized? Is it just a marketing tool? Their names are lavished on the screen as if they are the stars of the movie. You can’t tell it’s them. You wouldn’t know it’s them. What a waste of time for all three guys involved. There. Moving on.)

The element of the movie that sort of works in the beginning is the first meeting between Dave and the chipmunks, and the ensuing hijinks as Dave tries to grow accustomed to having these “pets” in the house. It’s all harmless stuff, not particularly funny, but it kind of works due to Jason Lee’s portrayal of Dave. He’s far and away the best thing about the movie. He doesn’t play Dave like a cartoon but as a real guy, struggling in his financial and romantic life, on the look-out for friend (even when it turns out to be three friends). He tries not to show his affection for the chipmunks but we can see from the beginning that he enjoys having them around. Even when they’re tearing his house to pieces and causing him to lose his marketing job. The best scene in the movie involves Dave being inspired by the chipmunks and writing the classic Christmas song we all know and love. It’s cute and enjoyable. For a few minutes anyway.

Once the movie leaves Dave’s house and takes us out into a long, loooooong national music tour in which the chipmunks are singing their butts off everywhere from Los Angeles to New York, with the maniacal music producer along for the ride, the ten percent of joy I had in watching the movie had sunk into negative numbers. The only character I had any care for was Dave, and he essentially disappears for the second half. The chipmunks are cute, I guess, but still very much CGI, and you never feel as if they are truly up there on the screen, actually interacting with their live-action environment. When they’re singing on and on and on, I felt like I had come across a pop music station that was doing the Top 200 of the Year, only I had changed the channel on #194. The songs are awful. And there’s really nothing of interest that happens in this section. Nothing that could be even remotely considered entertaining on any general level.

While sitting in the theatre, I looked to my left to see a group of four people–a teenager, a mother, two grandparents–and I’m thinking to myself, what the hell are you doing here? There are plenty of much more worthy films to be seeing right now. Maybe not so much at a mainstream theatre (I saw this film in a theatre in Irvine where movies like Atonement, No Country for Old Men, Into the Wild, and Juno don’t ever play) but clearly there were other options. I studied the grandmother for a few moments. She had a look of complete apathy on her face. She looked just as if she were watching a satisfying drama, or a mildly entertaining thriller. or CNN. Or the weather channel. People will watch anything these days, they really will. And Alvin and the Chipmunks, which made an astounding 44 million dollars last weekend, proves that quality, especially when it comes to children’s entertainment, doesn’t seem to matter that much anymore. It’s all about the buck. Has the sequel been announced yet? I’ll be counting the days. Yay!!! Where’s a hammer? I need to hit somebody with it.

Oh, and if you’re wondering why I subjected myself to this movie in the first place, let’s just say it was a favor to somebody… somebody who wanted to see it and somebody who told me after that I could pick the next three movies we see together. I could’ve asked for four, but I didn’t want to be greedy.