Squeals for the 'squeakquel'

I had a movie date with my niece Keona over the weekend, and while I was so very much tempted to bring her to Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, hello!), we went for a film she’d thoroughly enjoy, Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel. And enjoy she did. Just like all the other children in the theater, who kept laughing all throughout the film, prompting Keona to squeal, “Everybody likes the movie!” during a rare lull in the laughter.

Well, this auntie aims to please.

Alvin and the Chipmunks sort of pick up where the last one left off. Alvin, Simon, Theodore (doot-doot-doot-doot-doot) are still with their adoptive father Dave (Jason Lee). Thanks to Alvin’s (Justin Long) antics during a concert, however, Dave has to stay in the hospital—in France.

Dave puts Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) in charge and the chipmunks are sent home to the States, to be taken care of by Aunt Jackie... who ends up having to go to the hospital as well. Alvin and his brothers end up in the care of geeky gamer Toby (Zachary Levi), Dave’s cousin, who finds the task a big disturbance in his gaming schedule. He deals with them only as much as he has to—until he finds himself forced to step outside of his digital cocoon and step up in real life.

And why does Toby have to do this? Because one day, a FedEx parcel arrived at Jet Records, bearing three female singing chipmunks. The instant they burst out of the package, they set eyes on Ian (David Cross), the former manager of The Chipmunks, who’d been living like a vagabond in the basement of the company building. Thinking he was still the Chipmunks’s manager, they immediately signed on as his new talents, The Chipettes..

I find it funny that Ian found The Chipettes almost accidentally. In the first film, Ian was shown desperately talking to random chipmunks, hoping he would find a replacement for the big stars that had slipped his grasp. I mean, how many talking, much less singing, chipmunks could there be?

Apparently, there were three more in the world: Brittany (Christina Applegate), Jeanette (Anna Faris), and Eleanor (Amy Poehler).

Ian enrolls The Chipettes in the same school the brothers are going to so they could compete against each other in a music contest. It’s basically love at first sight for all the chipmunks, but they don’t get to be friends because of the competition between them. Of course, Ian being Ian (the greedy manager who’d stop at nothing, including putting the chipmunks in a cage, for success and all its trappings).

The real star of the movie, as always, is Alvin, who says, “It’s on like Donkey Kong!” to the challenges of school and its bullies. But, the rest of the chipmunks are equally adorable, my favorite being the baby Theodore (Jesse McCartney), who occasionally has nightmares and has to snuggle beside Dave—or, in this case, Toby—and is really the element that binds the brothers together. I was particularly fond of The Chippetes, too. I remember looking forward to seeing them in the original cartoon and wishing they would sing more.

The Chippetes gives really good renditions of Hot ‘n Cold and We are Family (with Alvin and the Chipmunks, beating Charice Pempengco), but it’s Single Ladies that rocks the house. Even Keona had her palm up, twisting backward and forward.

Animation has really come a long way since the original Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon series. I’m glad, though, that most new versions of cartoons that I enjoyed watching always kept most of what I loved intact.

A bonus treat for girls in their twenties and above is that Zachary Levi of Chuck fame plays a really adorable, though geeky and bumbling Toby. He has a moment to watch out for wherein he confesses love for a girl through an on-the-spot song. Let’s just say it wasn’t only Keona squealing in delight.

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