“Three ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies’ episodes parodying ‘Star Trek’, ‘Dick Tracy’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’. A classic animated series that is fun for the whole family!”
© 1988,1991, 2009 Bagdasarian Productions LLC. All Rights Reserved.
DVD TITLE: Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies – Star Wreck
DURATION: 66 minutes (3 episodes)
DVD INFORMATION: Full Screen Format, Dolby Digital, English, Stereo
COMPANY: Paramount Home Entertainment
RATED: NOT RATED
RELEASE DATE:Â September 8, 2009
Created and Produced by Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karman
Directed by Charles A. Nichols, John Kimball, Rudy Larriva and Don Spencer
Featuring the voices of:
Ross Bagdasarian Jr. as Alvin and Simon Seville
Janice Karman as Theodore Seville
Funny things are happening where no Chipmunk has dared to go! Alvin stars as Captain Dirk, commander of the S.S. Boobyprize; Simon is Mr. Speck, and Brittany is Uhaha. Together, they must rescue fellow crewmember Dr. McRoy (Theodore) after he gets abducted by a weird extraterrestrial family! This high-flying spoof of the box office smash will leave you beaming with laughter! The DVD includes 2 additional episodes: Elementary, My Dear Simon, and Chip Tracy.
The animated series “Alvin and the Chipmunks” is one of those animated series that has been part of the childhood of several generations.  First beginning as a music group created by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. back in 1958, the trio which featured Alvin, Simon and Theodore were on top of the charts with their song “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” and eventually giving more exposure to the trio with the animated show “The Alvin Show” which started in 1961 and lasted through 1962.
But the chipmunk trio would return in a new animated series that would last through 1990 and feature a female chipmunk trio known as the Chipettes which featured Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor. During the eight and final year of the Chipmunks animated series, the series concluded with “The Chipmunks Go to the Movies” in 1990. The theme of the episodes were the Chipmunks and Chipettes doing a parody of popular films
This DVD is the fourth DVD release of the “Alvin and the Chipmunk goes to the Movies” and features three episodes which are:
- Star Wreck– (Episode 95) In this “Star Trek” parody episode, the USS Booby Prize goes to a planet and encounters an alien family that feels that everything must be the same. But this race also has a weapon to vacuum those things that aren’t the same, thus putting the crew and the ship in danger. The crew of the USS Booby Prize start to wonder if they made a good decision of bringing the aliens to their ship.
- Chip Tracy – (Episode 99) Crime is up in the city and one crime group has kidnapped Chip Tracy’s girlfriend. Now, Chip Tracy must stop the criminals and get his girlfriend Bess (Jeanette) out of harms way.
- Elementary My Dear Simon – (Episode 54) Alvin and the chipmunks do a parody of “Inspector Sherlock Holmes”.  In this episode Alvin (Holmes) and Simon (Watson) try to find out who committed a burglary at a museum. This episode is the only episode that is not from 1990 and was produced by Murakami-Wolf-Swenson for syndication.
VIDEO & AUDIO:
Animation for “Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies – Star Wreck” definitely shows its age. Since these episodes are 20+ years old, you’re not going to get pristine picture quality . I will say that compared to the 1961 episodes seen on the DVD “The Very First Alvin Show”, they must have remastered the 1961 episodes because they look clean and colors are nice and sharp.
Blacks are nice but compared to the late 80’s and 1990’s animation, although better with artistic backgrounds, these three episodes has its share of dust and comes out a bit blurry and soft.  But if there was one thing that caught my attention is that the background artists did a good job painting the backgrounds (where many tend to not show as much shading of colors). The series is presented in full screen format.
As for the audio, audio is presented in Dolby Digital and in English Stereo. Audio is clear and understandable during the dialogue segments but for music, sometimes the words are hard to pick up. But for the most part, audio is clear and for those with a home theater-based receiver, the best option I found was to watch the series with stereo on all channels.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
There are no special features included. But there is a preview for upcoming “Alvin and the Chipmunk” DVD releases.
I grew up with “Alvin and the Chipmunks” and can easily remember watching the television series during my younger years. So, it’s definitely a blast in the past to see these episodes on DVD. For the most part, the episodes are lighthearted as they feature both Alvin and the Chipmunks and also the Chipettes as various characters from popular Hollywood films.
The episodes are not violent and are family friendly. For the most part, as an adult, I think that this series can definitely be enjoyed by children and adults but possibly not enjoyed in the same manner as with children of today may not be familiar with the characters of “Star Trek”, “Dick Tracy” or “Sherlock Holmes”. We know that Alvin is doing his Captain Kirk style of talking but children are easily not going to pick up on that.
As for the DVD, I wish that they would include at least five episodes instead of three. As for the picture quality, the animation does show its age as some episodes are very soft and has its share of dirt and scratches (which is common with older animation on DVD).
But for the most part, fans who grew up with “Alvin and the Chipmunks” can be happy with this release, especially Trekker fans who enjoyed the original “Star Trek” episodes.
If you are a fan of this classic animated series, definitely check out “Alvin and the Chipmunks Go to the Movies – Star Wreck”.