Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip

They’ve somehow managed to squeeze four movies out of this and while the thought of sitting through another one makes one’s teeth itch, the truth of the matter is that despite Alvin 4 being another lazy collection of clichés and predictable scenarios the young audience this is for should get a bang out of it. And that’s all that matters really, isn’t it?

Alvin (Long – more of him in a mo) and the gang are troubled to find that Dave (Lee) will ask Samantha (Williams-Paisley, the bride in Father of the Bride) to marry him on a break in Miami, which means uber teenage bully Miles (Green) will be there stepbrother. Nightmare. Miles isn’t too gone on having rodents or Dave in the family either and so they are forced to band together and hit the road to stop Dave from proposing. On the way to Miami they anger an air marshal (Veep’s resident sycophant Tony Hale) who is hell bent on stopping them…

Okay, the positives. It’s short, Wild Hogs director Walt Becker (the series’ fourth - no director ever signs on for another one) injects a bit of pace into the proceedings, Tony Hale’s villain provides a few laughs, and there are chuckles to be had during the airport security scene. John Waters turns up (but I’m not sure at the moment if that’s a positive or a negative) while Theodore’s consistent inability to grasp the gravity of any situation is cute. And there’s a Jim Steinman dead ringer (see what I did there? No? Doesn’t matter) giving it socks to Total Eclipse of the Heart on American Idol. Coincidence? I think not. That’s a half star right there.

The negative. That would be the songs. Those damn songs with their damn pop culture references. And what passes for dance music these days (that LMFAO dude shows up to do LMFAO dude stuff on the floor) sounds terrible - but then again I’m not the preferred audience.

Now. Justin Long. It’s not the actor himself that’s the problem here but why pay Justin Long what I can only assume to be a healthy amount of moola to voice a character when the voice is at such an unrecognisable pitch? It can’t be a marquee decision – when has anyone anywhere ever said, ‘I can’t wait for the new Justin Long’? (that goes for Anna Faris, Christina Applegate and Kaley Cuoco, whose Chipettes turn up in a belated cameo, which might disappoint the young females in the audience). Is the thinking that kids might not go to the fourth Chipmunks movie because that one from the Big Bang isn’t in it? It can’t be.

Anyway, kids should like it, parents shouldn’t hate it.