Blu-ray Movie Reviews

When Dave (Jason Lee) has an unfortunate accident, the chipmunks end up in the care of his dimwitted nephew Toby (Zachary Levy) and have to face the rigors of high school without any parental guidance. It's there that the three hit singers meet the Chippettes—Brittany, Eleanor, and Janette—whom they must challenge in order to represent their school in a district wide battle of the bands to save the schools music program.

Creator Ross Bagdasarian would not be happy with this contrived screenplay but it raked in over $218 million at the box office and his heirs are a little richer for it. To say my family was disappointed would be an understatement. We all enjoyed the first film and the chipmunks are cute as can be, unfortunately the cringe-inducing human actors offset any goodwill garnered from the entertaining musical numbers from the cute CGI creations.

Video Highlights

• AVC/1080p encode on a BD-50 disc
• Strong color saturation
• Excellent detail
• Solid black level
• Adequate CGI

Audio Highlights

• DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack
• Tepid LFE
• Front-heavy presentation
• Above average dynamics

The highlight of the video presentation are the rich and luscious colors but the audio track leaves a little to be desired. The LFE is lacking in the music and the dynamics could be better.

Bonus Materials

• Six featurettes (HD)
• Behind-the-scenes segment (HD)
• Five music videos
• BD-Live enabled with "Live Lookup" and access to two exclusive deleted scenes
• DVD and Digital Copy of film

I didn't have high expectations given the trailers, but it amazes me how much this did at the box office. I would think the negative word of mouth would have limited its take, but parents probably wanted to get the kids out of the house over Christmas and this was their only option available.

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Release Date: March 30, 2010
Studio: Fox

Movies: 3/10
Picture: 9/10
Sound: 8/10

Review System

Source
Oppo BDP-83 Blu-ray player

Display
JVC DLA-RS1 projector
Stewart FireHawk screen (76.5" wide, 16:9)

Electronics
Onkyo Pro PR-SC885 pre/pro
Anthem PVA-7 power amplifier
Panamax M5400PM power conditioner

Speakers
M&K S-150s (L, C, R)
M&K SS-150s (LS, RS, SBL, SBR)
SVS PC-Ultra subwoofer

Cables
Monoprice HDMI cables (source to pre/pro)
Best Deal analog-audio cables
PureLink HDC Fiber Optic HDMI Cable System (15 meters) from pre/pro to projector

Acoustical treatments from GIK Acoustics