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Acting
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Directing
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Story
Starring: Justin Long, Matthew Gray Gubler, Jesse McCartney
Director: Walt Becker
Running Time: 92 mins
Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Road Chip is an American film and the fourth in the Alvin And The Chipmunks series. After Dave leaves the chipmunks in LA while he goes to Miami with his new girlfriend, they decide to embark on an epic journey across the country to make sure he doesn’t leave them for her.
Okay, I know this isn’t a good film by any means, but before I do get into all of its flaws, I’m afraid I have to admit one thing. The chipmunks are cute. I’ve not seen an Alvin and The Chipmunks movie before, and I was hugely surprised that I wasn’t grinding my teeth into dust at the very sight of them, but there were numerous moments where their cuteness actually brought a smile to my face, and made this film a whole lot more bearable.
That said, there’s no way three cute CGI animals can stop an entire film from being awful. Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Road Chip has an extremely dull and formulaic plot that belongs back in 2004 with the likes of Garfield, incredibly average acting, and some of the most irritating breaks into song I’ve ever seen.
In fact, let’s start with that: the singing. Firstly, I don’t get why the chipmunks have to be major pop sensations in this series, but I’ll let it slide. What I couldn’t cope with was the series of musical breaks with modern pop hits sung by the chipmunks’ high-pitched voices. Yes, I said they were cute, but having to listen to three helium balloons sing the likes of Uptown Funk and Turn Down For What are not entertaining in any way, and feel like a massive waste of time.
The story itself also feels like a huge waste of time. If you’ve ever seen one of these CGI animals in the real world movies, you’ll know the plot here. Rather than animal control, we’ve got an air marshal hunting the chipmunks down, while their ‘dad’ looks like he’s on the verge of forgetting about them for a woman.
It’s painfully formulaic, and doesn’t really deserve your time, because there’s no moment when The Road Chip decides to move away from a generic plot and be original. Of course, 4 movies into a kids’ franchise, you can’t expect much more, but I was very disappointed at how one-dimensional and formulaic everything about this movie was.
Finally, the performances. Garfield once again springs to mind when you think about Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt’s poor performances alongside CGI Garfield, because the likes of Jason Lee, Tony Hale, Josh Green and Kimberly Williams-Paisley all look bored out of their mind next to the chipmunks. There’s very little for them to do, this being a young kids’ movie, but even so, all of the performances are not entertaining in any way.
Overall, whilst I still admit that the chipmunks were pretty cute, that’s no excuse for the various of shortfalls this film has. It’s painfully formulaic, the actors look bored, and it strays into irritating territory with the chipmunks’ musical breaks, so that’s why I’m giving Alvin And the Chipmunks: The Road Chip a 5.9.
