The first Alvin and the Chipmunks was just about cute enough to work, while managing a slight satire of the music industry at the same time. Nevertheless, it wasn’t without hiccups, and as if the idea couldn’t get any clunkier, this cringey-not-cutesy “Squeakquel” places the rodent trio – Alvin (Justin Long), Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler), and Theodore (Jesse McCartney) – into the American high school system, yet lacks the light satirical touch that made the original mildly engaging.

After Dave (Jason Lee) is put in the hospital after one of the Chipmunks’ concerts, they are left in the care of an aunt, but after they also hospitalise her, they are cared for by gormless douche Toby (Zachary Levi). Furthermore, after being left in financial tatters at the end of the first film, snide music executive Ian (David Cross) hatches a plan to get back to the top by exploiting a group of female singing chipmunks – Eleanor (Amy Poehler),  Jeanette (Anna Farris), and Brittany (Christina Applegate) – who are pitted against their male counterparts against their will.

What can be said? Theodore is still the cute, podgy, and high-pitched selling point that he was in the first film, but the slapstick count has been ramped way up, yet the pratfalls are often more vicious this time (such as when the Chipmunks accidentally cripple their aunt), causing the tone to seem less playful. What’s most baffling, though, is the film’s uneven notion of its school setting; it is clearly a locale ripe for satire, using the chipmunk’s diminutive size to make them an easy geek metaphor, yet the jock that takes exception to their presence is strangely straight-laced (although his pal does, in rather drole fashion, remind him that they are only 8 inches tall).

Ultimately it is a film suffering from a lack of invention; the Chipettes, while cute and well-rendered, are carbon copies of their male counterparts, for we have the nerd, the cute, fat one, and then the arrogant and charismatic one. Put a bow or a skirt on Alvin, Simon and Theodore, and you essentially have the Chipettes. Perhaps the best benefit they bring to the film is that it allows David Cross (quite arguably the best thing about the first film) to come back for round two.

I am frequently bothered by animated films that are too keen to reference pop culture for a cheap laugh, and this film is loaded with them: it has throwaway references to Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Meerkat Manor, and NASCAR’s Digger (who makes a totally random appearance near the end). It does, however, manage one rather hilarious dig at the Nintendo Wii, yet for the most part, these references are about as scattershot and baffling as the film’s flashback to Toby’s high school experience mid-film. For the most part, aside from the impressive visual effects, all of the big comedic beats fall flat, such as the painful episode where Alvin joins the high school’s varsity football team, and the surplus of potty humour that’s lazy enough to re-use the most rudimentary of dubbed fart sound effects.  

So what does the film get at? Its glimpse at the shrewd nature of the music industry is surely a retread of the first film’s, yet given how quickly the Chipmunks’ keen fans abandon them for the Chipettes, perhaps Betty Thomas is mocking the fickle tastes of pop audiences, and the incessant search for “the next big thing” in our media-saturated society. I suspect this is wishful thinking, though, if the film’s aggressively uninspired high school subplot is anything to by - treating the chipmunks as humans, with the same drama we’ve seen dozens of times before – and no measure of cute CGI can adequately disguise that.

The final reel is an incredibly procedural Battle of the Bands-type deal that we’ve seen so often, but its predictability isn’t really the problem; it’s that it can’t manage to levy its own witty stamp on any old ideas, and is therefore quite charmless, sealing the deal with a cringe-inducingly syrupy rendition of “We Are Family”. Worst of all, though, is an almost entire omission of Jason Lee’s character Dave, the kind-hearted jingle writer who took the furry protagonists under his wing in the first place. His sporadic 5-or-so minutes of screen time goes by too fast, and one has to wonder what the screenwriters were thinking by writing-out the property’s canonical lynch-pin.

Will The Squeakquel please kids? Sure. Adults? They’ll marvel at the effects for a few minutes, then become more and more disenfranchised with each toilet joke and shamelessly desperate pop-culture reference that passes by. The quiet charm of the first film is gone, and Jason Lee is sorely missed, but at least it still has David Cross...