Spongey's Christmas Carol #6: Alvin and the chipmunks

Hello, spongey here

Welcome to spongey's christmas carol.

Sorry i haven't done this in awhile. i've been sick. seriously, i felt like shit.

And speaking of shit, let's talk about today's feature!


Remember alvin and the chipmunks? yea, sadly i do too. For years they've entertained kids and annoyed the fuck out of adults. Alvin, Simon and thedore have been popular since the 60's with that popular christmas song, which i do really like. Then in the 80's there was an animated series It was alright.

It was very popular. So with every popular animated thing...they made a live action movie out of it!

And with the release of....the new one with the shitty name., and the fact that christmas is heavily involved in this movie, i figured we should look at it.

This, is Alvin and the chipmunks.


First, the plot. Dave Sevile (Jason Lee) is a down on his song writer, who finds himself in the possesion of 3 signing chipmunks. First, his life is a living hell thanks to them. But he finds out that they can help out his song writing job. They sign a record deal with Ian Hawke (David Cross) and they become huge stars. You can fill in the blanks from there.


CHARACTERS

Yea, we won't jump into my final thoughts yet. We'll talk about certain stuff first. Let's discuss the characters in this

Jason Lee as Dave: Dave isn't the most likeable guy, but i don't hate him. He's just bland and boring. They try to make you feel for him, and in a more general way, i do. But not in the way the film wants you to. Oh, and jason lee? He's awful. Seriously. He looks like he does not want to be in this. He comes off as very forced, and it's like he doesn't he even try. Yea...


The Chipumunks:

Justin Long as Alvin: Let me put it bluntly: Alvin is an asshole. He does horrible things during this movie, and the other 2 chipmunks do nothing to stop him. They are enablers. I hate alvin. In the 80's show, he was just like a mischievous little kid. But here, he's a dick. /so ya...

The other two are of course Simon (voiced by some guy i've never heard of) and Theodore (Voiced by Jesse McCartney, who i sadly have heard of). Theodore is fat because he eats, and he eats because he's fat. Funny? No. Simon is....okay. The only one that doesn't bug me, so that's something.

Also, why get celebrties to do the voices if you're just going to pitch the voices anyway? No one's gonna tell!

David Cross as Ian Hawke: Okay, if i review a bad movie, i have to say one thing i liked about....this is that one thing. Seriously. He's actually kind of funny as the bad guy in this. He KNOWS he's in a bad movie, and has fun with it. I give him credit here. Oh, and by the way...David Cross recently said Chipwrecked was the worst experience of his career.

Not joking.

I needed to get that out the way, because i had a lot to say about this movie, but i needed to just talk about the important stuff in my final thoughts. Yes.


Final Thoughts:

Yea…I didn’t like this one. It’s bad. Very bad. Like I said before Jason lee is bad in this. He doesn’t try at all. Hell, in the 2^nd one, he only show for 5 minutes, gets hurt, and you never see him until the end. (And Zachery Levi procecdes to waste his talent). But of course he saw that money, and came back for the 3rd one. The chipmunks are quite annoying. They sing bad covers of popular songs, do some unfunny jokes, and annoy you with those voices. And it's also very cliche. Oh, and it's way too "hip". They try to make the chipmunks hip with the hoodies, and the covers. it's just annoying. it's the part of these movies i hate the most. it shows that all they care about is making money, and not entertaining the kids. The sequel only makes this worse, but i won't get into that.

However, it's not the worst. It didn't piss me off too much....well it did once.

You see, in one scene, Theodore...shits on the couch. Dave comes in and sees this. Simon tells him it;s just a raisin. Dave tells him to prove it. Simon.....puts it in his mouth, and dave walks away.

....WHAT THE FU-

*WE ARE EXPERIENCING TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES*

Yea...I guess there's a market for 2 chipmunks one cup.

Overall, this movie may is lame, cliche, and annoying. It's just bad. But i will say one thing...

it's not as bad as the Squeakuel

GRADE: D

Spongey's Christmas Carol #5: Goosebumps Horrorland

Hello, and welcome back to Spongey's christmas carol.

Have you had enough of RL Stine’s Christmas stuff? Well…too bad! Today, we have a REAL Goosebumps book…about new years. But it had a Christmas scene! Close enough, right?

I’ve already mentioned the recent Goosebumps Horroland series. But I haven’t talked about the second story arc of it!

Starting with “When the ghost dog howls”, a 2^nd arc began. The story would start in horrorland with our heroes. They would then visit the Chiller House gift shop, owned by jonathan chiller. They buy a object there, and get a free horror toy with it. Chiller says they’ll pay for it later. They get home, object brings bad stuff. (Or bad stuff happens and said object fixes it) . And there’s more, but it’s not important for now.

Today, we look at one of the books in this arc.

This, is “Slappy New Year”

As far as Slappy books go, the plot is very basic. Ray is sometimes a dick to his brother, who Is a wimp. He buys slappy from the chiller house gift shop, and uses it to prank his brother. Of course, he finds a slip of paper in slappy’s pocket, and reads the words on it.

This brings him to life, and slappy spreads evil. His parents think Ray is doing this, as per usual for the slappy books.

Much like the 1^st and third slappy books, in the first half, it turns out that the brother has been doing the bad stuff. Though this time it makes sense, as Brandon wanted revenge for al the bad stuff ray has done. So Brandon is a cool, and likable character, and Ray learns a good moral.

I like books with moral, okay?

So how does Christmas figure into this?

Well, ray wants to throw a big new year’s eve party, and through the book his chance of doing so keeps getting crushed cuz they think he’s crazy.

Later on, he goes to his friend’s house on Christmas to get some gifts. During this scene, slappy comes to life and does something I don’t remember, and while the parents are dealing with that, he destroys the Christmas tree. Somehow no one sees a dummy coming to life…but whatever.

So the rest of the book is the normal slappy stuff. Since this book is recent, I won’t spoil it.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

So in my opinion this book is…

Okay.

Yea, it’s just okay.

It’s just, kind of routine, for a slappy book. It rehashes “Night of the living dummy 3” for the most part. The guy doing the bad stuff in the first half, the strong kid who is a wimp, stuff like that. It feels like I’ve read this before.

But it’s also what I like about it. It was back to basics. No mind stealer doll, no dumb plot twist or anything like that. Plus, it has its moments. Ray learns a lesson, and Brandon OWNS slappy near the end and becomes braver. Crowning moment on awesome!

Plus, it’s a slappy book….WITH A MALE PROTAGINIST.

All the others have a female main character. Slappy acts like a pedo most the time. I like seeing a male one for once! It’s just refreshing.

The 1^st half is mostly routine, but not bad. The 2^nd half is more interesting, with cool moments in it. Plus I like the new years feel to it at times.

So there you go. It has it’s good points, and bad points, and overall it’s alright, but nothing too special. Check it out for yourself and see what you think

GRADE: C+/B-

Spongey's Christmas Carol #4: Ghosts of Fear Street

Hello, and welcome back to Spongey's christmas carol.

Yesterday I did a video review of a RL Stine book…that isn’t Christmas, but it was close enough. Well today, I have a real Christmas book!

You might remember RL Stine’s first major Book series Fear Street. It took place in the town of shadyside, where the titular Fear Street is cursed due to a looooong backstory that was so massive it took a entire sub series to explain.

That series did have a Christmas book called “Silent Night” (which spawned some sequels) ….but I don’t remember enough to review it. But I did read it. It was alright.

So anyway, Fear Street and Goosebumps were both pretty popular. So, why not combine them?

This is where Ghosts of fear street comes in.

Ghosts of Fear street is mainly a lighter version of Fear street. But at times, it is darker than goosebumps. It’s like if Goosebumps decided to advertise that it tries to entertain rather than scare.

The series is actually a lot of fun, and I say read it. Today we look it’s Christmas book

This, is “Fright Christmas”

Oh, one more thing…stine didn’t write any of those. That’s right, they were all ghost written. So when a book sucks, I can’t blame him. Fuck.,

So, I won’t go into major detail with the set up on this one. We have this asshole kid named Kenny. He’s pretty much an ass to everyone. He mainly picks on his little sister, and at a school at school named timmy. He’s short, so Kenny calls hm tiny timmy. Why do I point this out? Well…

Kenny gets locked in some room in the mall while Christmas shopping, he gets out the room, only to see it’s after closing, Earlier, he kinda ripped off the beard of a mall santa, which got people calling him mean names. He bumps into the mall santa again, and trys to pull off the beard. Only…it won’t come off. It’s really santa.

Santa tells Kenny off for being dick. He tells Kenny he will be taught a lesson. He will be visited….by 3 ghosts.

Yep, it’s a Christmas carol!

Infact, the tagline on the front cover is “This Christmas carol will scare the dickens out of you!”

Yes.

So the rest of the book goes as you would expect. The ghost of Christmas past shows Kenny a mean prank he pulled on timmy. The ghost of Christmas present…shows Kenny my fave scene in the book, which I won’t spoil. It’s too awesome.

Oh, and the ghost of Christmas future shows him exactly what Kenny is…a monster. And also he kinda kills Kenny.

….fine.

Oh my god, he killed Kenny! (You bastard!)

…Yeah, so anyway, much like in the original story, he wakes up, and thinks it’s a dream. He heads home and finds that…his parents are read “A Christmas Carol” and notes that Kenny hates the story, but he comments that he likes it now.

Subtle.

So yeah. Oh, there’s a twist ending. Timmy was the ghost of Christmas future.

Now THAT should of happened in the original book.

So ya, do you want to read this book now?

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This book is awesome. It’s one of the best of the series. I think it’s a nice take on the dickens tale. It’s self-aware, so it tries something different. I found the story to be interesting on it’s own. And the twist is pretty awesome

All in all, this ghostwriter did a good job.

GRADE: A

Spongey's Christmas Carol #3: Goosebumps

Here's a gift...

a video review!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GWbcYiqzcMk

Spongey's Christmas Carol #2: How the grinch stole christmas

Hello, and welcome back to Spongey's christmas carol.

Last year i mentioned the classic cartoon How the grinch stole christmas in my christmas specials list. I breifly mentioned the movie, but i didn't go indepth. while it's time to do so!

Everyone knows the plot, but i'll talk about it anyway.

This tells the story of a mean-spirited, cave-dwelling creature called The Grinch who hates Christmas. He proceeds to pilfer all the Christmas paraphernalia from the perky folks living in Whoville in an effort to, well, steal Christmas. Although he succeeds, the Whos happily sing their big Christmas song anyway. Realizing the True Meaning Of Christmas, the Grinch has a change of heart, and returns all the loot as the Whos cheerfully welcome him into their community.

What? You didn't know the ending? Well, you should have. It Was His Sled, after all.

I'll say it: I really like this movie.

The main thing that makes it work, is that it respects the source materiel.

What a live action adaption should do, is remind us why he loved the orginal, and recreate some of it;s best qualities. You can do something new, but keep to the feel of the original.

This does that perfectly.

This recreates all the great moments in the cartoon, as well as adds more. They really make you feel for the Grinch in this one, and you actually root for him to steal Christmas. He’s given some major development, and you see why he would want to steal Christmas.

Oh, and Grinch sings “You’re a mean one mr Grinch”. I love this version of it, but the original is of course better.

The best part of this entire movie is Jim Carrey’s performance as the Grinch. He is so funny in the role. He chews the scenery, and you can’t keep your eyes off him whenever he’s on screen. It’s just awesome.

I like they extend the story of a 30 minute special for film legenth, and most of it feels needed in the story….most.

One issuie I have with the film is that it has some padding in the first half. I think it should have been 15 or 20 minutes shorter,

But other than I like it. To sum it, it’s a funny Christmas movie that has everything that made me love the original.

GRADE: B+