Alvin and the Chipmunks

Struggling songwriter David Seville (Jason Lee) is on the verge of giving up his dream of a career in music. But a chance encounter with three talking and singing chipmunks gives him new inspiration—and exasperation with their childish antics. Surely nobody expects great art from a movie like this, but just how much slapdash shoddiness did producer Ross Bagdasarian Jr. (son of Ross Sr., the Chipmunks’ original creator) think he could get away with? The computer animation is nice—if only writers Jon Vitti, Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi had taken their job as seriously as the battalion of animators took theirs. The original “Chipmunk Song (Christmas, Don’t Be Late)” is, amazingly enough, still around after 49 years, but this movie is disposable junk that’ll probably be forgotten in a month.