The Alvin Movie

The Alvin Movie is a 2018 traditionally-animated musical comedy-adventure film written by Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., Doug Langdale, Sherri Stoner, Deanna Oliver, Jon Vitti, John Swartzwelder and directed by Rich Arons. The film is produced by Paramount Feature Animation and Amblin Entertainment. The film is distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was based off the 1961 series, The Alvin Show, the first TV incarnation of Alvin and the Chipmunks, produced originally by the now-defunct Herbert Klynn's Format Films. The film was released to theatres on December 7, 2018.

Synopsis
Dave Seville and The Chipmunks go off on a trip to New York City to rehearse for their list of new songs and perform them opening night on-stage.

Plot
The film starts where Dave is working on a new song. He plays a few keys to check, but is interrupted by Alvin playing his harmonica. Dave keeps getting interrupted, until he finally yells out "ALVIN!" and Alvin rushes to him with a reply, "OKAY!"

The next day, Dave received a letter from New York City to come and perform at the city hall. He brings the Chipmunks along with him to do a show. While on their way to New York City in the car, Alvin and the Chipmunks sings Road Trip to the tune of Bicycle Built for Two. When they finally got to New York City, the people actually came for Daisy Belle's arrival, not Alvin's.

Still under construction...

Characters

 * The Chipmunks: The main characters of the film.
 * Alvin: The talented troublemaker of the group.
 * Simon: The intelligent realist and the most responsible of the group.
 * Theodore: The cute and innocent member of the group who likes to eat a lot.
 * David "Dave" Seville: The Chipmunks' adoptive father, songwriter and manager, Dave's patience is tested nearly every day by Alvin, usually to the point where he yells his trademark yell "ALVIN!!!". Despite all this, he loves all of his boys equally.
 * Clyde Crashcup: A scientist in a white coat who tended to "invent" things which had already been invented and whose experiments invariably failed. He usually invented by penciling the concept in air, with the picture becoming the actual object.

Voice cast

 * Ross Bagdasarian Jr. - Alvin Seville, Simon Seville, Dave Seville
 * Janice Karman - Theodore Seville
 * Linda Cardellini - Daisy Belle
 * Brian Cummings - Clyde Crashcup
 * Tress MacNeille - Mrs. Frumpington
 * Frank Welker - Stanley the Eagle

Soundtrack
A CD soundtrack for The Alvin Movie was released on November 17, 2018.

Development
After the successful Alvin and the Chipmunks live-action films, Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. decided to make an all-animated film based on his father's characters. The Alvin Show was the Alvin and the Chipmunks first animated incarnation which came around in 1961 on CBS, and Bagdasarian decided to make a film based on the 60s' animated series. Several animators, such as Rich Arons, came around to work on the movie and tried their best to make it the same as the original 60s' incarnation.

A team of writers were called in to help as well. Doug Langdale (who had previously worked on Earthworm Jim, Project G.e.e.K.e.R., and Dave the Barbarian), Sherri Stoner and Deanna Oliver (both had previously worked on Animaniacs and Casper), Jon Vitti and John Swartzwelder (both had previously worked on The Simpsons) were all brought in to beef up the quality of the writing. There were some funny moments borrowed from the same shows they've worked on, such as Alvin doing the "EAT DIRT!" line but altered to "EAT LASERS!" for a reason. Alvin is a talking chipmunk and Earthworm Jim is a talking worm in a robotic supersuit.

Production on the storyboards took 2 to 3 months. Storyboarding and re-storyboarding the movie was a different matter completely. Artists such as Travis Cowsill, Neal Sternecky, Spike Brandt, Tony Cervone, Jeff Siergey, Keith Tucker, Curt Walstead, Sean Bishop, Llyn Hunter, Dave Krocker and Alan Gibson were working on the storyboards for the entire movie. Sometimes, if the scenes are not like they intended them to look from the original script, retakes will be called. In an interview by Ross Bagdasarian Jr., he said "There was a deleted scene from the movie. Alvin and Daisy Belle were brawling and beating each other up like it's Dragon Ball Z. We had to cut that out, because people were going to think that boys will hit girls and it will cause complaint letters to come flying right into the studio."

The animation work took 6 to 12 months. Bagdasarian hired many former Disney animators to work on the movie. The animators did follow some timing corrections and animation directing. The result was very fluid and lifelike, comparing to the original Alvin Show (which had limited animation). Eric Goldberg and Jamie Oliff, two of the animators from Disney did very amazing animation of the dancing sequences. There were also some corrections that had to be done before it was ready for editing.

Writing
The writing in this film stayed almost exactly the same as in the original Alvin Show. 90's pop culture references, in a similar manner to Earthworm Jim and Animaniacs, were intended to spice things up, but ultimately failed to do so.

Voices
Ross Bagdasarian Jr. and Janice Karman reprised their roles as Dave Seville and The Chipmunks for the film. Others, including Linda Cardellini and Tress MacNeille, were cast as Daisy Belle and Mrs. Frumpington. Brian Cummings reprised his role as Clyde Crashcup. Andrea Romano was the voice director for the movie.

Animation
Rich Arons was the main animation director and timing supervisor. He hired away many former Disney animators to work on the movie. The result was full traditional 2-D high-quality hand-drawn Disney-like animation. It really lacked the usual limited animation style used in the original Alvin Show, because of its lavish budget. John Kricfalusi and his team of animators from Spumtwo were commisioned to draw some layouts of the characters powerfully distorting their faces and bodies, which mixes in with the conservative, calmer, on-model style of The Alvin Show.

Music
The music in the movie was composed by Ron Jones and Walter Murphy. The music stayed close to the original Alvin Show as possible. Randy Newman used his rejected song he originally wrote for Disney/Pixar's Toy Story entitled The Fool, for the scene on stage at a bar where Alvin sings about how he used to be worshipped, but was turned down in favor of Daisy Belle being more popular than him in New York City.

Reception
The Alvin Movie had received mixed-to-positive reviews. Critics praised for the animation and humor, while others had criticized for the use of 90's pop culture references and "ruining" the image of the original Alvin Show. The film didn't play well at the box office (because the animation and humor being the only ones brilliant), and was considered to be Bagdasarian's second box office failure, after 1987's The Chipmunk Adventure.

Home media
The film was released to DVD and Blu-ray on March 4, 2019, after its short run in theatres.

Trivia

 * This was the first Paramount Feature Animation film based on a TV series not to be distributed by Nickelodeon Movies.
 * Because the film was based on The Alvin Show, the Chipmunks reverted to their 60s' pre-Ruby-Spears era designs, even Dave Seville.
 * Most of the songs were recycled from 1958-60s' Chipmunks albums, which are archival recordings.
 * The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)
 * Alvin's Harmonica
 * The Alvin Twist
 * My Wild Irish Rose
 * Chipmunk Fun
 * Alvin for President
 * The Little Dog
 * Home on the Range
 * Bagdasarian and Karman were disappointed with the 90s pop culture references (when it was supposed to be 60s pop culture references), but the songs were pretty much the only things they liked in the film. They even liked Randy Newman's song The Fool, a blues song which was originally written for Disney/Pixar's Toy Story.