Very obvious movie reviewing: "Alvin and the Chipmunks 2, the Squeakquel"

This movie stinks.

Sadly, I saw it in the theater, instead of waiting until it came to Blockbuster, where I could have passed it on the shelves for months or years without being remotely tempted to rent it.

It not only stinks, it taints. It ruins. It destroys. It disturbs.

I saw "Alvin and the Chipmunks" when it came out a few years ago. It was lame. It was not as cute as the cartoon series of my childhood. This sequel, however, sinks far below the low quality of that first big screen effort. Best part about it? The word "squeakquel" in the title. That is the high point.

The original cartoon series is like a pool of quicksand in the middle of a jungle. The first movie effort is the equivalent of a man being sucked into that quicksand pool while still holding onto a vine or rope. This sequel is the equivalent of the man's carcass decomposing deep in the quicksand while his straw hat decomposes under a pile of leaves.

I'd like to say it's the worst children's movie I've ever seen, but that title goes to "Barnyard." Sometime, when I can peel back the layers of pain associated with the viewing of that movie last summer, I'll offer a very obvious movie review. It's still too raw now.

Okay, okay, I know what you're thinking: "Erin, it's a sequel of a talking chipmunks movie. What did you expect?"

I expected bad. I expected lame. I expected silly. I expected no nutritive value. I had no expectations. And yet, this movie still failed to meet even that level.

It was cinematic garbage.

The film was not the equivalent of cinematic junk food, no (a la the "Madagascar" series, stupid/silly but funny). It was cinematic junk food that had rotted in dumpster and was then dumped into a crowded landfill, then washed down a hillside by a torrential monsoon where it polluted a stream that fed into a stagnant cesspool filled with bloated fish, which has now been labeled by the EPA as a hazardous waste site, lawsuit pending.

I really didn't like it.

"The Squeakquel" was lazy filmmaking. It was a colossal waste of funds, CGI, theater seats, tiny sweaters, etc. etc.. The sad thing is, it featured the vocal talents of Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, Justin Long, David Cross (a veteran of "Arrested Development", one of my fav sitcoms!), and Jason Lee. Each one of those people is capable of being funny, but there was nary a shred of funny in this thing.

My other complaints:

1) the story made no attempt to follow reality. It didn't even attempt to follow the *reality* set forth in the first film of the series. The chipmunks enroll in a public high school and the principal tells them that the music program funding is being cut. (No wonder - the music room demonstrates that the teacher must have spent all the budget on drums. Why SO many drums? So that later, a character can trip awkwardly into the drum nest and break all of them.) However, the chipmunks have the chance to participate in district-wide music competition; the winning school receives $25,000 for its music program.

What kind of school district funds its arts programs this way? If it has $25,000 to gift to a winning group, something is wrong! Also, the competition was supposed to be wow-zy, featuring talented hip hop dance troops, and simultaneously low-budget, with an M.C. who joked about the lights being turned off at 9:30 p.m. Can't have it both ways, please.

The chipmunks enroll in school three days before the competition. The chipettes then enroll two days before the competition. Both end up performing - and spoiler alert: winning - the competition, after they arrive at the competition via a remote-controlled toy helicopter. What kind of competition allows for so many late-entry performers?

2. the acting is terrible. Jason Lee gets hurt and spends most of the movie in a Paris hospital, but somehow manages to make it back to the states just as the music competition is starting. He dances with his crutches in the air during the grand finale, and he looks like he'd rather be in that hospital room. I would rather be in the hospital room! The scene where Lee slips into a sedated sleep in said hospital room is subpar by any acting standard you can think of, i.e. elementary school holiday plays, soap operas, high school drama clubs, Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones, the 007 love interest.

I just realized, too, that the new guy in the movie, Dave's cousin Toby, is played by the guy who stars in "Chuck." He's cute enough, and I cannot help but think he had a few other film offers better than this one. This could be a career tanker.

3. the script is nonsensical. At first, it seems that the football QB is going to be the villain, but he ends up friending Alvin, so that doesn't quite make sense. Alvin even gets to join the football team, and rides the football as it sails into the end zone. When Alvin and the ball land, it's considered a touchdown. To me, this kind of TD seems like cheating. Also, how did they make such a tiny helmet?

One of the big "pranks" is the convincing of Simon that he should serve as the school litter patrol. He asks three people to pick up trash, writes a ticket, then finds out it's a joke. This was the conflict climax? It didn't even seem that mean ...

The school principal is at first aloof and cold, but then accidentally reveals a chipmunks tattoo on her forearm, and we are supposed to believe that she has some kind of crush on these singing rodents. Hello, creepy text overlay? How do you help the plot at all?

4. the chipettes are skanks-ville. Uncle Ian takes them under his wing after they arrive in a FedEx envelope, and trains them in an unoccupied model penthouse suite with a gorgeous view of L.A. and a shiny red grand piano he sneaks into (because he is currently living in the basement of his old office building, eating discarded muffins that come down the garbage chute. I don't even think that's how coffee shops discard of their muffins!). The little chipmunk girls practice their dancing on the red piano, and, yes, they perform "All the Single Ladies." I do not like watching girl chipmunks gyrate on shiny pianos. It turned my stomach. Way too sensual AND gross.

Also nonsensical? Each girl chipmunk has a little Barbie Dream House-style vanity on the piano where she primps, but the bottles and tools on those vanities look like they also come from the Barbie Dream House, meaning, they are fake. Who primps with a fake plastic hair spray bottle?

This film does not follow its own rules. In better hands, I suppose that could be consider post-modern. In these hands, it's simply post-funny.

5. the chipmunk/chipette attraction is creepy. When the six chipmunks meet in the school hallway, they are immediately attracted to each other. We know this because the film goes into slo-mo mode, and each creature's eyes get buggy. But later, the girl chipmunks need a place to live, so Dave, the chipmunk guardian/dad, builds bunkbeds for all of them. At our bedtime, my children were still trying to work this out: "Are they brothers and sisters or are they going to get married?" asked Graham. The movie wants it both ways. Yuck.

5.5. the chipette names don't match each other. The lead singer sister is named Brittany. I thought this was lazy, too, since a key plot point is that the chipettes are going to open for Britney Spears at the Staples Center. Two blonde singers with the same name in one movie? Come on, filmmakers! The other chipettes are named Eleanor and Jeanette. Wha? Those sound lovely. Why not a third name to match the set?

Also, the Staples Center stage is shown with a giant red curtain drawn across it, the kind you'd find in a broadway theater, NOT a sports arena. The curtain is needed so that Uncle Ian can hide behind it, but it completes ruins the illusion that there is a Britney Spears concert taking place there. You know those Hannah Montana concert scenes that sometimes air at the beginning of her Disney Channel show episodes? The ones with a shot of thousands of screaming fans that then cut to Hannah singing on an obviously different stage in some sound studio? The Staples Center footage in this movie makes those Hannah Montana sequences look like they belong right up there with Martin Scorsese's "Shine a Light" Rollings Stones documentary.

6. the chipmunks - boys and girls - are ugly. I think the animation in this movie is grotesque. The animals are not cute. They are also hard to understand. They sing other people's songs, poorly. Their eyes are disturbing. Girls within the movie supposedly *love* the chipmunks, but I would rather watch a dancing Mon-chi-chi. Or Oscar the Grouch. Or a man being swallowed by quicksand.