Alvin and the Chipmunks - The Road Chip

Year: 2015
Genre: Family-Oriented Comedy
Directed: Walt Becker
Stars: Jason Lee, Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Josh Green, Tony Hale, Bella Thorne, Eddie Steeples
Production: Fox 2000 Pictures

Well folks we have finally gotten to this point as a culture. Decades of a steady diet of commercialism, instantly forgettable pop songs and saccharine, listless family-oriented entertainment has birthed this bland, unrelenting, unforgivable, onscreen abomination. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (get it?!) is the cinematic equivalent of cold instant, decaf coffee; it’s pointless, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth and is the product of something that’s been out for far too long.

Been out since 1958

Perhaps I over-exaggerate. After all, if you come in with bottom-barrel expectations you might actually be surprised how bearable it can be; like the smell of kitty litter or like prison. Alvin (Long) and his brothers, the bespectacled Simon (Gubler) and the rollypoly Theodore (McCartney) have settled into a symbiotic domestic relationship with Dave (Lee) their semi-father, semi-manager, semi-ward. They still sing on occasion but Dave is concentrating on other acts like The Chipettes and Ashley Grey (Thorne). That and starting a relationship with new a flame (Williams-Paisley) who happens to have a mean-spirited, maladjusted, malcontent-ed son named Miles (Green). The kids don’t take a liking to each other; so when Dave and Samantha take a trip to Miami with the presumed intent to get engaged, the boys team up to put a kibosh to Dave’s happiness so he’ll never leave them again.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Trip is the fourth (fourth!!!) movie in a series of live-actions films based on a 1958 novelty record of three grown men singing blandly then sped up to sound like helium slurping children. And much like every IP that’s made of plushy anthropomorphic animals with high-pitched voices, the Chipmunks have enjoyed eons of toy merchandise, videos, cartoon series’ and a spin-off in the form of the aforementioned Chipettes. They simply will not die and there's not a single thing anyone can do about it except sit down and watch a non-stop clutter of celebrity cameos no child would notice, jokes too juvenile for adults and musical numbers largely too inappropriate for them not to censor therefore ensuring no one will like them.

I suppose if one were to pinpoint the silver-lining to this unforgivable aversion it would be the amicable Tony Hale who plays the main villain; an overzealous air-martial. "You provided the soundtrack to my heartbreak," he says to the vexatious chipmunks as they scurry around his office. There's no hint of an actor on paycheck-collecting autopilot a la Jason Lee; just a sincere if broad performance by the second (second!) Arrested Development (2003-Present) alum. Give that man an Oscar! Another quick positive are the scenes in the airport and plane respectively which offer the viewer the nostalgia of pre-War on Terror TSA flight checks. The pressing question during the plane sequence however at least in this viewer's mind was why is someone bringing so many exotic animals to Florida?

Children will no doubt eat this turd up like they were zombies and the movie was...well certainly not brains; I don't know, intestines, I backed my metaphor into a corner here. Loaded with egregious product placement, pointless side characters, and one (one!) awkward reference to Pink Flamingos (1972), watching The Road Chip will make you dumber than a...chipmunk; now I've lost track of a simile, God help me.

Final Grade: F