Tag Archives: Jason Lee

The first Alvin and the Chipmunks movie did what it was supposed to do — it brought that trio of singing chipmunk brothers, Alvin, Simon and Theodore, into the 21st century and the age of computer-generated graphics with a minimum of surprises and a certain sweetness that almost made up for the flatulence jokes. With Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, though, almost everything to like from the first film — which was not much, but more than enough to make it an agreeable time-waster for your kids — is squeezed out by stuffing the film with new characters, new surprises, new plotlines until what was originally a nice, friendly big-screen machine designed to make cute animals into money loses a lot of the little luster it had as the clankier, clumsier second film clatters and clamors across the screen.

Jason Lee — who played the chipmunk’s mentor and guardian Dave Seville in the first film — is barely on-screen in The Squeakquel, laid up by calamity while the boys are on-tour in France; guardianship of the chipmunks, and the moral lessons that come with it, pass to Zachary Levi’s Toby. Toby is a little spacey and distracted (he’s a video-game nut), so he’s not exactly ready when the three mammals in his care not only have to deal with the blows and buffets of high school (you may ask why three six-inch talking chipmunks jump ahead to high school instead of a less dangerous environment, but if you start asking one logical question about The Squeakquel, so many of them soon pile up in your mind that your head explodes) but also with the arrival of three singing female chipmunks, the Chipettes, who are not only enrolled at the same school but also singers, managed by the nemesis of the first film, slimy music manager Ian Hart (David Cross).