Alvin and the Chipmunks: War Against the Chip-Offs

Alvin and the Chipmunks: War Against the Chip-Offs is a 2023 American live-action/computer-animated musical comedy film directed by Alex Zamn. It is the 5th film in the Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise and is the sequel to Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.

Plot
Alvin, Simon, and Theodore come across rip-offs of them called "The Squirrels" (Cameron, Peyton, and Eyore). Knowing this, The Chipmunks decide it's their destiny to stop the rip-offs at all costs from ruining and stealing their reputation.

Why We Wage War Against This Movie
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
 * 1) For starters, a fifth installment in the Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise was unnecessary. Road Chip seemed like a good ending to it, plus the reception the first 4 movies got was pretty negative, so there's no point in continuing a film franchise that has all 4 previous movies hated.
 * 2) This film was made almost 8 years after its predecessor, which is way too late to continue a franchise.
 * 3) Like the previous 4 films, the film suffers from unfunny and gross-out toilet humor:
 * 4) *In a scene Alvin, Simon, and Theodore mail a jar of farts to their rip-offs hoping they would be too disgusted to continue their career.
 * 5) *A scene of Theodore trying to use the bathroom but keeps falling into the toilet.
 * 6) The concept of the movie is good, but it's executed horribly.
 * 7) The chipmunks were heavily flanderized in this movie, showing they learned nothing from the first 4 films.
 * 8) *Alvin is now a deranged troublemaker who causes Dave trouble all around the house. He becomes a psychopath once he meets the rip-offs of him, Simon, and Theodore and tries in all possible ways to get them to stop copying them and to end their career. Even going as far as to attempt to straight up murder them!
 * 9) *Simon is now a know-it-all nerd who keeps telling Alvin and Theodore to not do this and not do that, and it gets annoying pretty quickly. Plus he gained this personality in the first place just to pander to the nerd memes.
 * 10) *Theodore is now just a glutton who likes eating marshmallows and White Cheddar Cheez-Its. He also has a weird obsession with twerking "for a joke" which is highly inappropriate for a movie made for kids!
 * 11) The new characters introduced, Cameron, Peyton, and Eyore aka. The Squirrels are all generic and one-dimensional bullies and rip-offs of the Chipmunks who have opposite personalities from The Chipmunks.
 * 12) *Cameron is the generic rip-off of Alvin who decides to mock The Chipmunks for no reason. Though, unlike Alvin, instead of being a troublemaker, he is a "peace-maker" who likes keeping his room tidy.
 * 13) *Peyton is the generic rip-off of Simon who decides to mock The Chipmunks along with Cameron and Eyore for no reason. Unlike Simon, however, instead of being smart, he's incredibly dumb.
 * 14) *Eyore is the generic rip-off of Theodore who decides to mock The Chipmunks along with Cameron and Peyton for no reason. And unlike Theodore, instead of being fat and sweet, he's skinny and rude.
 * 15) Out of the 5 films in the franchise, this one has the MOST product placement (So far). These include the first 4 Alvin and the Chipmunks films (different scenes), McDonald's, iPhones, Windows 11, ScrubDaddy, YouTube, Captain Crunch Berries, Kroger, White Cheddar Cheez-Its, PornHub of all things (though it's thankfully indirectly mentioned), Among Us, Peppa Pig, Toyota (Dave's other car is a 3-door AE86, for crying out loud), etc.
 * 16) The film tries way too hard to be hip and cool with the kids, including stuff like characters using internet slang like "wtf" "sussy baka" "only in Ohio" "lowkey" "simp" "whooper whooper whooper whooper" and more. There is even a scene where Theodore bursts into the room and starts singing the Whooper song, except every lyric is replaced with sussy, and Alvin responds with "Whooper Among Us in Ohio".
 * 17) The movies steal some elements from The Amazing World Of Gumball episode "The Copycat", like how the rip-offs of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore copy their moves and The Chipmunks trying to get them to stop copying them.
 * 18) The special effects aren't that good, this is due to a new studio, Pizzeria FX making the special effect. Though due to them being low experienced and just starting their company at the time, the special effects ranged from meh to downright bad.
 * 19) There are inappropriate scenes and elements in this movie despite being made for kids:
 * 20) *Like we said above, the fact Theodore likes twerking "for a joke" and the indirect mention of Pornhub.
 * 21) *Alvin referencing the "Step bro what are you doing" meme by saying "Step Simon what are you doing?".
 * 22) *Simon saying "wtf".
 * 23) Executive Meddling: Similar to Chicken Little Back In Da Coop, the movie was originally supposed to be a 3D animated reboot of Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise, but someone at Disney insisted to continue the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise, to which both Disney and 20th Century Fox agreed.
 * 24) *Rushed Development: Development of the movie started in late 2021-early 2022, and was trying to get it out for Alvin and the Chipmunks' 39th anniversary, though because of what happened as said above, they had to restart the entire film and make it live-action rushing the film, which is another main factor why this film is bad.

Redeeming Qualities
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
 * 1) Like said before, the concept of the movie is interesting but was badly executed.
 * 2) Dave remains likable in the movie, along with The Chipettes (Despite them not getting that much screen time in the first half of the movie).
 * 3) Despite being weak characters, The Squirrels serve as great antagonists.
 * 4) The final battle (or sing fight?) is well done and entertaining.
 * 5) Disney thankfully saved some elements of the movie, despite kind of declining in recent years.

Reception
Alvin and the Chipmunks: War Against the Chip-Offs received mixed to negative reception from audiences and critics alike. People criticized it for being an unnecessary continuation to an already dead film franchise, its gross-out humor, the one-dimensional villains, and the flanderizations of characters. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 19% based on 976 reviews with an average score of 3.2/10. On IMDb, the movie has a rating of 4.5/10.

Box Office
At the box office, the film made around $991 million dollars and was the 3rd highest-grossing movie of the month, just below John Wick: Chapter 4 and The Super Mario Bros Movie.

Trivia

 * This movie is the first in the Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise to be worked on by Disney after they acquired the rights to 20th Century Fox.
 * The film, similar to "The Copycats" from The Amazing World Of Gumball is meant to poke fun of a rip-off show of Alvin and the Chipmunks called "The Cool Squirrels With Cameron", and is meant to poke fun at the rip-off genre in general.
 * This is the first Alvin and the Chipmunks film to not have a human as the main antagonist.

Scene: Theodore's Meme Outburst
Simon: "Theodore has been getting into internet memes lately." Alvin: "Oh, really?" Simon: "Yeah, he keeps talking about this one meme about a certain sandwich from Burger King." Alvin: [Gasp] "Oh wait no it's that meme..." Theodore: [Burst into the room] "SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY! SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, WOO HOO SUSSY, SUSSY, SUSSY, AT SUSSY, HAVE IT SUSSY, SUSSY!" Alvin: [Sigh] "Whooper Among Us in Ohio.."