Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983 - 1990)

Let’s Kablama! 
K-A-B-L-A-M-A Slam! 
Let’s Kablama! 
You’ll have fun if you’re old like I am! 

Aaaaaaand… yeah. That’s the beginning and end of my career as a songwriter. Let’s talk about cartoons!

The Premise: Three anthropomorphic chipmunks named Alvin, Simon, & Theodore balance their lives as international singing sensations and the adopted children of songwriter Dave Seville. 

     So, I’m going to start off by admitting that I used to wonder why Alvin and the Chipmunks were just that… chipmunks. They act like human kids. They even kind of look like human kids. (More so than chipmunks anyway.) Why didn’t they just make them be human kids? Well besides the fact that Alvin and The Other Kids makes a pretty lousy title, the reason is pretty obvious. They sound like chipmunks! It’s basically their whole thing! I don’t remember when I figured this out, but it was a lot later than I should have. 

     Back in 1958, singer/songwriter Ross Bagdasarian sped up his voice for a novelty record and topped the charts. It was a gimmick… basically, like if that Snapchat filter that makes you look old somehow became an entire franchise… and it paid off big. The song was “The Chipmunk Song” (keepin it simple. I dig it.) and you hear it over and over every Christmas. After that, there were more albums, a comic book, The Alvin Show, and a television special until Bagdasarian’s son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. gave us the chipmunk show of my generation… Alvin and the Chipmunks! 

     This show was right up there with the Smurfs and Garfield as a staple of my Saturday mornings. I loved the Chipettes, Uncle Harry, Ms. Miller, and I especially enjoyed the show’s final season devoted to making Chipmunk spoofs of hit movies like Back to the Future and Batman. Buuuut this particular installment of the Kablama Slam is detouring into more of a movie review, because as much as I loved this show, it’s the 1987 film The Chipmunk Adventure that will always be MY go-to for Alvin, Simon, and Theodore viewing. 

     Its plot involves the Chipmunks going up against the Chipettes in a hot-air balloon race around the world… which turns out to be a front for a diamond smuggling operation. Yeah… this movie goes hard, and I am not joking when I say it is one of the most underrated works of animation out there! As I understand it, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. swooped in and hired a bunch of talented animators who were recently laid off by Disney and eager to work. It was a move that definitely paid off because the animation in this thing is incredible! 

     When I was a kid, I would rent The Chipmunk Adventure almost every time we had a “movie night.” It became this reoccurring thing where my parents would groan, “Ugghh, Nathan! Not The Chipmunk Adventure AGAIN!!!” I don’t know why we never just bought it! Maybe we couldn’t find it in stores, but there was at least one copy at the local Blockbuster… and it was checked out almost every weekend!

Kablama Slam! Fun Fact: It’s definitely a family affair. Ross Bagdasarian Jr. voiced Alvin, Simon, and Dave (taking over the roles from his father) while Ross Jr.’s wife, Janice Karman, voiced Theodore and the Chipettes. Their children have also worked on the show’s more recent incarnations.