A walk along the pier to their cruise ship while belting out a naturally high-pitched rendition of The Go-Go's "Vacation" is how "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked" kicks off, and it is so no-nonsense and direct that it's almost jarring. Is the first reel missing? Or does director Mike Mitchell (2010's "Shrek Forever After") and writers Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger (2011's "Kung Fu Panda 2") figure that, by the rodents' third live-action/computer-animated amalgamation, audiences are already familiar with the characters and don't necessarily need a tidy set-up? Then again, that doesn't stop all of the above from milking 87 minutes out of a plot so shallow it's long grown stale and tedious by the one-hour mark. Therein lies the problem. While this entry blessedly does away with most of the unsettling and mean-spirited themes of the earlier films—namely, the exploitation of children and the hypocrisy of deriding mass-market corporations and shameless product-placement while being itself a mainstream entertainment in existence for the sole purpose of making money and selling merchandise—there simply isn't enough material to withstand a feature-length running time in between the musical numbers. For what it's worth (not much), it's still the best of the trilogy.
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