Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
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Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (also known as Alvin and the Chipmunks 3) is a 2011 American live action/computer animated musical family comedy adventure film directed by Mike Mitchell. It is the third live action/animated film starring Alvin and the Chipmunks following the 2009 film Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which was a sequel to the 2007 film Alvin and the Chipmunks. It was distributed by 20th Century Fox and produced by Fox 2000 Pictures, Regency Enterprises and Bagdasarian Company. The film was released on December 16, 2011. A fourth and final film titled Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip was released on December 18, 2015.
Plot
Dave Seville, the Chipmunks and the Chipettes are taking a luxury cruise to the International Music Awards. Of course, Alvin cannot resist the urge to create havoc, and the singing rodents soon find themselves marooned on a seemingly deserted island. While Dave and an unlikely ally launch a search, Alvin and company discover that they are not alone on the island, as they first thought.
Why It Sucks
- Once again, most of the jokes consist of toilet humor, bad puns (this even includes the title), and jokes that seem a little too adult for a G-rated film, such as Ian commenting on how he saw Snoop Dogg light a joint with two carrot sticks.
- It has lots of cliches, like the "being stranded on a deserted island" cliche that has already been done to death.
- Plot holes; like Simon in his Simone persona being hit on the head by a golf ball somehow turning him back to his normal personality, when it was a spider bite that actually gave him the Simone persona.
- Like the previous films, It also contains so much pop-culture references that it even includes references to jungle films like The Jungle Book, George of the Jungle (1997), Tarzan and even survival films like Cast Away. In fact, it feel more like a ripoff.
- The film cares so little about its cruise setting that it doesn't even tell the audience where the Chipmunks and the Chipettes are sailing to. They say they're traveling to the International Music Awards, but even then it is never really explained where it is actually taking place.
- The skimpy, flourish bikini-like outfits the Chipettes wear throughout the other half of the movie all look ridiculous, weird and disturbing as they are actually underage. It is also never explained what happened to their previous outfits and they aren't seen again until the mid-credits scene.
- Certain plot points, such as Eleanor breaking her leg and especially Simon developing an alternate macho persona named Simone (more on that later), go mostly nowhere.
- A massive amount of filler, the biggest offenders being Alvin fighting a meerkat (in which he calls a "honey badger") and the dance-off between the Chipettes and three casino patrons on the cruise ship.
- Despite being shown on a tropical island, neither meerkats nor honey badgers are native to tropical climates.
- The musical numbers serve no purpose to the story and only appear in the film because like the previous movies, they took whatever popular songs by well-known artists (e.x. "Vacation" by The Go-Gos and "Trouble" by P!nk) and butcher them up with chipmunk singing.
- Like the previous films, Mark Mothersbaugh's musical score is still lackluster and pathetic.
- The film does not improve anything of the previous films, mainly due to unlikable characters, popular songs that butcher up and unnecessary pop-culture references.
- Simon's alternate personality subplot does little to impact the story and doesn't even know what it wants to satirize.
- While the CGI on the Chipmunks are okay, the other uses of effects, such as when Simon ties Dave's bow tie and when the monster fish is attacking Simone, are extremely out of place and fake-looking.
- At the climax where they go and find Jeanette after she gets captured by Zoe, Alvin says that at one point in his life, he has to defy Dave's orders, when that's all he's been doing throughout the film, making it an easily insulting and hypocritical message.
- At one point, the movie has to literally stop everything so Alvin can explain in full detail a bad joke.
- Zoe is a bland character and her transition from supporting character to villain feels like it comes out of nowhere, just because they needed a completely new villain for the live-action tetralogy. What's even worse is that she gets no repercussions for almost murdering Dave and kidnapping Jeanette for her goal of getting the treasure in the cave. It is also unnecessary, as she pretty much redeems herself after Ian talks her down, also making the switch to villain pointless.
- Again, Dave's famous phrase, "ALVIIIIIIN!!" scream sounds phoned in and forced. He also still sounds like he has a problem with his vocal cords.
- Poor acting, particularly from Jenny Slate and, of course, Jason Lee, with the exception of David Cross.
- The ending is just anti-climatic. To makes matters worse, there is the cliché "dance-off" scene where The Chipettes and the Chipmunks perform to a combination/remix of both "Born This Way" by Lady Gaga and "Firework" by Katy Perry in the International Music Awards, which is pretty much forced for the end credits, as it never even tells us what they actually even win for, if at all.
- The mid-credits scene is horrible, as it involves Dave, the Chipmunks and the Chipettes going home on a plane, only to have Alvin, like the troublemaker he is, cause an airline food cart to crash right into Dave that nearly injures him again.
- The materials given were so bad that even David Cross admitted that working on the film was the most unpleasant experience of his career.
- Abysmal direction of Mike Mitchell, the same director behind Shrek Forever After (while better) and who later directed better films, like Trolls and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.
- False Advertising: On the posters, The Chipmunks are wearing holiday beach outfits, but they never actually do wear them in the movie.
- Also, when you look closely at the main characters' faces, you can see that they lazily reused the same pose from the last film’s poster.
- As mentioned stated, the title Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked sounds laughable.
- It has almost no impact on the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise as a whole; its main contribution to the story is Ian Hawke's redemption, but still, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked can be ignored, his follow-up can be seen in its sequence and nothing very important would be wasted. Much of what happened in Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked is completely ignored in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.
Redeeming Qualities
- Despite what he had to go through, David Cross still gives off a decently fun performance as Ian that's way funnier than his portrayal in the second film.
- And also unironically, his character actually went through a bit of development as well, from being the generic greedy music director from the last two films into to just an indeed equally likable minor but anti-hero character, in mostly off-screen between the last film and this film. Despite not being much, he still got more character development than the seven main characters in the whole live-action tetralogy adaption.
- The fact that Alan Tudyk takes over the role of "Simone" from Matthew Gray Gubler is a little interesting, though it quickly becomes stale.
- As previously stated, the CGI on the Chipmunks are alright.
- At least, they do tone down on the product placements and don't overuse them, unlike the two previous films.
Reception
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked received even worse reviews than the first two movies. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 12% based on 82 reviews and an average rating of 3.51/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Lazy, rote, and grating, Chipwrecked is lowest-common-denominator family entertainment that's strictly for the very, very, very young at heart.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 24 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Trivia
- David Cross, who played Ian in this film and the previous two installments, has spoken critically of the film, calling it "the most miserable experience I ever had in my professional life". He had no problems with the other actors or director, but said there were a couple of people who made it an awful experience.[1]
- It got a tie-in game on the Nintendo DS, Wii, and Xbox 360.
External Links
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked at the Internet Movie Database
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked on Rotten Tomatoes
Comments
Categories:
- Family films
- Adventure films
- 2010s films
- Comedy films
- Musical films
- 20th Century Studios films
- Rip-off films
- Hybrid films
- Based on cartoons
- Films Aware of How Bad They Are
- Animal films
- Based on television
- Abusing the Show
- Abusing the Mascot
- Box Office Hits That Received Negative Feedback
- Alvin and the Chipmunks films
- Sequel films
- Live-action films
- Films with misleading posters
- Gross-Out films
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