एल्विन एंड द चिप्मंक्स: द स्क्वीक्वल

This film is about three chipmunks who has to put their singing career on hold to attend high school.

Even when I was typing the plot summary, I was already laughing out loud. What a ridiculous story! Can a sane person imagine chipmunks going to high school, and have all the schoolmates treat them like actual people? The plot is full of stupid and crazy clichés, in every imaginably contrived manner. And the voices of the chipmunks are so high pitched that they hurt my ears and annoy me so much. Even putting my enraged emotions aside, I often could not hear what the chipmunks say, which made me like the film even less. The quality of the animation is bad, production is bad, and acting is bad. Everything is uniformly bad. I can't believe how awful this film is, even taken into account that this is a children's film!

Today I had to sit through this movie several times. :-(

As an adult, it wasn't funny or entertaining. But what amused me was the reaction from the kids in the audiences. Almost none of the kids laughed out loud during the matinée viewing (the showing with the most kids in attendance).

Some take away comments from the mouth of babes: "Is it over YET?" "I'm bored" and my personal favorite "That wasn't so funny at all." (poor kid said it over and over again with the "big" jokes.) Plus, I had never seen so many kids ready to leave after the first 15 minutes.

It didn't get better over the course of the evening.

Let's face it: "The Chipmunks" is a pretty thin premise. Once you get past the novelty of squeaky voiced animated rodents, there's really not much there. So this movie's straight-line, A to B to C story is a serious drawback.

Director Betty Thomas doesn't get a whole lot out of the cast (although, to be honest, I don't expect much in the way of high-caliber acting in movies like this), and the whole thing has a bit of a TV-movie feel, but the animation is rather good, and the film moves moves along at a pretty good clip, so even adults won't get too bored.

Certainly, for some reviewers, a film like this, in the final analysis, is perfectly acceptable, since it's "for kids," and thus the only thing that counts is whether it's "entertaining" on some basic level, regardless of its actual quality. That's a pretty common attitude toward kids' films, and one that really sells children short, as if they have no interest in character or story. They do, just like anyone else, albeit on a less sophisticated level than (most) adults. For example, I know that a lot of reviewers hated "Hotel for Dogs" but that film had an engaging story, well-drawn characters and a story that, while ultimately predictable, still held a few twists and turns. It wasn't particularly good, but it was better than this film.

I asked my 11 year old and 7 year old daughters what they thought of this film. They both loved it.

The 3 on IMDb is a bit misleading. This is a film for children, not a campaign to win an Academy Award! Obviously there are people out there who take things a little toooooo seriously when rating kid's movies.

My 11 year old daughter writes the following: the movie was great. i love the sounds of those little voices. why are kids films usually getting a 2,3,4? the film the music, adventure,scenes were all entertaining for me.

Remember folks, this is a film for children, the chipmunks have been around for more than 30 years so they must be doing something right. If you want to over analyze a film then do a search on the French new age section and go your hardest, on the other hand if you are looking for pure entertainment for your under 12's then go no further.

I don't understand the severely low rating for this film. 2.7?

I was prepared for something awful but wanted to do something with the 4 younger kids before they headed back to school.

This is the movie they wanted to see.

I've seen a lot of kids' movies and this is definitely among the funnier ones I've seen.

My 8-year-old and I sat next to each other and had a hard time controlling our laughter on a few occasions.

I told my husband he definitely has to see this when it comes out on video. I can't wait to watch it with him!

Give it a try - maybe even risk raising your expectations a little!