Release: January 10, 2017
Film: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Tagline: How many bad and clichéd plots can a film squeeze in? This squeakquel goes for as many as possible.
This review provides examples of:
- Anything but That!: The Critic asks the movie not to make him look up just who the heck Digger is in the finale.
- Artistic License – Sports: The Critic thinks Alvin won the football game with Air Bud logic.
- Ass Pull: Invoked. The end of the movie has the Critic calling the movie suddenly being about Jeanette conquering her fear of heights.
- Chick Magnet: Malcolm becomes this to the D'aww Girls by saying they went to school together.
- Cliché Storm: Invoked by the Critic, who says that the filmmakers shoehorned 5-10 clichéd plots into the story to try and fool the audience into thinking they know what they're doing.
- Damned by Faint Praise: When the Dutch oven joke occurs, the Critic considers it sad that he has to make the very real argument that at least the Chipmunks didn't eat shit like the previous film.
- Demoted to Extra: The D'aww Girls are sent to the same couch where Doesn't Count is as a metaphor for Dave being absent for most of the movie.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Malcolm gets beat down by the D'aww Girls simply for not liking Neil Patrick Harris.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: The Critic drops a safe on his parody of Aunt Jackie.
- Flipping the Bird: The D'aww Girls and Doesn't Count jointly flip the Critic off when he checks on them after they got Demoted to Extra.
- Headdesk: The Critic briefly strikes his head against the wall after another abrupt subplot change to Jeanette overcoming her acrophobia (fear of heights).
- Mistaken for Pedophile: NC's opinion on Dr. Rubin is that she's gonna make the news and not in a good way due to being a big fan of the Chipmunks.
- Money, Dear Boy: Invoked by the Critic with Dave's cameo: "This is my contractually-obligated cameo!"
- Nightmare Face: We pause on a close-up of Simon's teeth as he attacks the bullies like this, with NC even considering it the poster for the next film, Chipceased.
- Portmanteau: During his closing statement, he calls it stupid, dumb, and then "dumpid".
- Questionable Casting: The Critic's opinion on the casting of such talented actresses as Christina Applegate, Anna Faris and Amy Poehler as the Chipettes Brittany, Jeanette and Eleanor, respectively (though he takes some exception on Faris, given her involvement in such flops as Mamas Boy 2007, Scary Movie 4, Movie 43, The House Bunny, White Chicks and Yogi Bear).
- Shout-Out
- As he dances away with the Bums while leaving the Critic to review the film some more, Darth Vader quips that it wouldn't be the first time he "obliterated these rodents". During Christmas 2015, The Force Awakens, the seventh Star Wars film, soundly defeated Road Chip, the fourth Chipmunks movie, at the box office ($247 million against $14.2 million).
- The Critic's Britney Spears jokes was interrupted by Cara Crocker's infamous video
angrily defending Spears following her botched comeback performance at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.
- So Okay, It's Average: Two cases:
- This is the Critic's opinion on director Betty Thomas, whose involvement with the film had him think he expected more of someone behind such hits as Private Parts and The Brady Bunch Movie, only for that to be evened out by her also directing such flops as Dr. Dolittle and John Tucker Must Die.
- He also finds out the hard way that the Chipmunks movies, even for all the advertising done, have never cracked number 1 in the box office.
- Spoof Aesop: Seeing the success of the Chipmunks movies, the Critic concludes that he can sell any movie to children, however inappropriate the content, simply by chipmunking the hell out of it. By that logic, he tries it on The Silence of the Lambs and then putting it up on the children's section on Netflix... and it seems to work, judging by him immediately receiving calls from angry parents.
- Star-Derailing Role: Invoked with the Critic's opinion on David Cross as Ian Hawke. His line over losing his reputation after failing to get the Chipmunks into his agency is reinterpreted by the Critic as an allegory to Cross's feelings towards the films, even showing an AV Club article where he describes acting in Chip-Wrecked (the third movie) as the most unpleasant experience of his career.
- Subverted Catchphrase: As the Critic, Malcolm and the D'aww girls watch the chipmunked version of Silence of the Lambs at the end:"I'm the Nostalgia Critic. I don't get it; I just exploit it."
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The D'aww Girls are introduced to make fun of Toby being an uninteresting copy of Dave.
- Take That!:
- The Critic jokes that Britney Spears is at a low enough point in her career that singing Chipmunks would be passable (the film itself was released in 2009, at the tail end of her infamous Creator Breakdown).
- He mocked Rogue One for ignoring the backstories of the characters and expecting the audience to understand everything about them.
- The subplot involving the Chippettes' troubles with Ian has the Critic thinking that it's a much better all-female rock band story than Jem and the Holograms (2015).
- Throw It In!: Responding to the scene where the Chipmunks got distracted by Dr. Rubin's bobblehead, the Critic imagines a scene where the film's writer (Doug) was distracted by a Stormtrooper bobblehead. After a brief expression of disbelief, he just lets the script in because it's just a Chipmunks film.
- You Monster!: The Critic calls out the Internet for forcing him to find out the origins of Digger (the mascot of FOX Sports for its NASCAR coverage).
Fava beans and nice Chianti! Cha cha cha cha!
