Alvin and the Chipmunks

This is tedious stuff for the adults who actually remember Dave Seville and his knack for making money by playing audio tracks back at the wrong speed, but tolerable entertainment for the young’ns who might think it’s something fresh. As played back here, Dave (a hopefully slumming Jason Lee) is an amiable loser who inadvertently brings home the chipmunks in a purloined muffin basket. The orphaned forest rats settle in their new home comfortably and when Seville realizes that the CGI critters can do passable falsetto renditions of contemporary pop songs, he sets about using their talents to pay the rent. Of course, there’s a girl involved who the rodents try to help Dave woo, and a Christmas motif to keep things seasonal. Along the way, the corporate overlords who produced this product take time to rewrap themselves as being an anti-corporate package. Other than that, it’s a lot of money spent on something so disposable. And to be fair, made tolerable with occasional flashes of whimsy that actually feel organic, this could have been much, much worse.