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Dzhastin
Reviews
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011)
Best of the 3 - According to kids...
Let's get one thing straight, this is not a movie for adults. I don't understand all the negative reviews on this site objectively reviewing this movie as an adult. If you're old enough to log onto a computer and look up a review of this movie, you're too old to appreciate this movie and it wasn't meant for you. If you're considering watching this movie it's because you have kids to entertain, so lets look at it through their eyes, alright?
I have three kids under 6 so I'll share their assessments. They've seen all 3 and enjoyed this one the most, by far. The first movie was probably the best by adult standards, but it had a lot of exposition explaining Dave's motivations and such that kids aren't particularly interested in. My kids won't sit through the whole thing unless I keep my finger ready over the fast forward button. The second movie was terrible, by both adult and children's standards. I hated it and my kids hated it for reasons that aren't worth getting in to here.
This movie seems to hit the sweet spot for my kids. It starts off quickly to get their attention and keeps moving, but never feels frantic or our of control like some kids movies can. The gags and songs come frequently enough to keep the kids from losing attention but not too fast so they start getting wound up themselves. They mix it up too, alternating between slapstick, sentimentality, action and musical/dancing numbers with songs the kids know and love.
A lot of children's movies have a "kids vs adults" theme that's played for laughs and the adults are total idiots and the kids wreak havoc for no reason other than creating chaos for chaos sake. Alvin is definitely a classic rebel and everybody's familiar with Dave yelling "Alvin!" In this movie Alvin is forced to be the "adult" and Dave learns that his "kids" can rise to the moment if he backs off and gives them the chance. It's a good message that's delivered sincerely, something that's a nice surprise in a movie that seems so frivolous.
As far as the content, there's nothing really objectionable here for even small children, unless you're an especially humorless shut-in.
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (2012)
Not an actual movie, it's a novelty item
To promote the upcoming release of the video game Halo 4, somebody made a series of five 15-minute web videos, using live action, set in the Halo universe. They were set up like a little miniseries with a vague story to accompany the novelty of seeing what it would look like if Halo came to life. It was a much, much higher quality than you would expect for a bunch of web videos. In fact, I'd say the production values and special effects were of higher quality than several movies I've seen recently. If the goal was to create a compelling marketing product that people would want to watch in order to get them excited about the game, they really did a phenomenal job.
Unfortunately somebody decided that because they had something that visually looked like a movie and had a story that vaguely resembled something you might see in a movie, that meant they had made an actual movie that they could release as a commercial product. Because Hanlon's Razor states, "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity," I'm forced to assume that this decision was an attempt to cash in on the Halo buzz and not an act of spite against all the people they knew would be furious when they realized they paid actual money for something that is not actually a movie. There are no real stories, there are no real characters, there's really not any explanation of why anything is happening or what any of it means. It's just long stretches of children being upset interspersed with shots that will make the viewer feel like they're playing the video game. It's about as much a movie as a pile of bricks and lumber is a house.
Warning to parents - towards the end of this movie my son (who's a little young to be playing Halo yet himself) looked at me with a very concerned face and asked, "why are so many kids getting killed?" If you think you might want to put this on for your child because they don't care if something doesn't have a story as long as it's something they like, you really don't. Nothing at all interesting happens for the first half of the movie, and then the rest of the movie is children getting crushed, shot, blown up, and slowly bleeding to death from gory leg wounds as their friends helplessly look on in tears. You'd have to be a real piece of excrement to deliberately charge people money for this.