Alvin 2: The Unspeakable Squeakquel

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Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel

20th Century Fox / AP

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Do kids know what's good for them? In movies, that is? A child of the decade just ending has been exposed to some of the grandest, most imaginative entertainment in film history: the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter series, to be sure, but mainly the animated features from Pixar, Dreamworks and Aardman. These films did more than teach life lessons about the value of friendship, loyalty and initiative; they gave priceless instruction in what movies can be, and how to watch them. Seeing Finding Nemo, Kung Fu Panda and Chicken Run — not to mention this year's Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Coraline and The Princess and the Frog — should create in kids the demand that any movie aimed at them must be at least within shouting distance of those masterpieces. If the good doesn't drive out the bad, it should at least stir in young minds a healthy skepticism toward movie mediocrity — and zero tolerance for crap.

Explain to me, then, why Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel earned more than $75 million in its first five days of release. Was the boffo gross due to brand recognition after the 2007 movie about Simon, Theodore and Alvin was a hit? But that's no guarantor of success; the Stuart Little, Scooby-Doo and Garfield sequels all tanked. Were parents seeking a celluloid babysitter over the Christmas holiday? They could have taken the cherubs to The Princess and the Frog or Disney's A Christmas Carol, worthy efforts that, together, took in only about a fifth of the Chipmunks' revenue in the same period. No, somebody — somebody young — must be enjoying this soul-sapping would-be comedy. Maybe I'm missing the wit in the Alvin 2 pileup of purloined plot points, toilet and fart jokes and tired references to old movies. (The "You talkin' to me" bit from Taxi Driver simply must be retired from overuse.) Or maybe kids aren't as cinematically precocious as I thought they were. (See the top 10 movies of 2009.)

Last time out, our singing rodents followed the guidance of their perplexed owner Dave (Jason Lee) and became international rock stars. This time Dave, in traction in Paris, sends them back to Los Angeles, where their caretaker is Toby, a PlayStation addict and all-around loser played by Zachary Levi (star of TV's Chuck). His main function — except for failing in public, then being romantically rewarded for it — is to make sure the chipmunks go to ... high school? Affirmative action in California admission policies now apparently applies to 8-in.-tall brown animals.

Send in the teen clichés. Alvin (voiced by Justin Long) joins the football team and wins a game; Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) gets a toilet swirlie from the jock bullies; Theodore (Jesse McCartney), fretting that his brother act is close to breakup, runs away from home and gets menaced by an eagle at the zoo. There's also a musical-talent sing-off that pits the little guys against a female trio of chipmunks, the Chipettes, laboring under the management of evil Ian Hawke (David Cross), the villain from the first movie.

The musical numbers, especially those performed by the Chipettes, have a generic verve; that's the best that can be said about the movie's CGI animation. (As in G-Force, the animated rodents interact with the live-action humans.) But when it talks, or tries to develop a situation, Alvin 2 relies on shtick that sinks below even the dismal standards of high school comedies and buddy farces. Pain is the key here: the movie has more gags that involve hitting, hurting and humiliating than you'll find in an entire Super Bowl's worth of commercials.

What's really frustrating about Squeakquel is the pedigree of some of the movie's perps. I don't mean the director, Betty Thomas, the Hill Street Blues actress who helmed one good movie (the Howard Stern Private Parts) before loading her résumé with the sort of dispiriting comedies (Doctor Dolittle, 28 Days, I Spy, John Tucker Must Die) that help give a bad name to the movies shown on airplanes. Instead, consider the stars who lend their voices to the Chipettes: Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler and Anna Faris, smart comediennes all. As for the movie's writers — Jon Vitti, Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger — they've spent a decade or two creating clever words and strange thoughts for characters on The Simpsons and King of the Hill, and Aibel and Berger helped script Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs Aliens. Writing funny for animals should not be a chore for these guys. What the heck happened? (Read "The Voices of Pixar.")

Squeakquel seems not to have been written so much as manufactured from an unwarranted pride in the first Alvin and desperation about what to do next. (If the director played by Daniel Day-Lewis in Nine had seen this movie, his sudden awareness of what the competition was producing would have instantly unblocked his creative sinuses.) The picture's single triumph, true to the mercantile nature of the enterprise, is thunderously obvious product placement. During one of their many demolition scenes, the Chipmunks perform the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" while opening a bag of Utz Cheese Balls. The whole movie follows suit: empty calories, no comic nutrition. Seeing Squeakquel is like gorging on Cheese Balls for an hour and a half.

Enjoy, kids.

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