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I won’t lie; when I got up to go see Alvin and the Chipmunks at 10 am on a Saturday morning, I wasn’t exactly shaking with anticipation. I was ready to give it cute, maybe a little bit of fun. But for me and every other member of the audience over twelve, I did not expect anything more.

Color me a bit surprised when part way through the movie, I found the boy beside me falling asleep and realized I had yet to look at my watch. It’s not that the movie was a great cinematic achievement that snuck up on me. In the end, it really wasn’t original enough to go much beyond cute. But past the cuteness of talking chipmunks, several injections of bathroom humor, and a few fun “kids home alone” scenes, I found that Alvin and the Chipmunks fell a bit short as a movie for kids and actually turned out to be a story much better suited for adults.

I’m not saying that the movie is inappropriate for children. It’s not the case of every joke having more meaning for adults than children like in the Shrek sequels. But where you would expect a story with an easily recognizable villain and clearly-marked points of conflict and triumph, the story that Alvin and the Chipmunks presents is one of a challenge that is less clear and ideas that gain much more meaning with an adult knowledge of the world.

In a nutshell, Alvin and the Chipmunks is the story of three talking and singing chipmunk brothers who end up falling into struggling songwriter Dave Seville’s life and making it big in the music business. But beyond that nutshell, I found the story of Alvin and Chipmunks to be quite an intriguing commentary on the entertainment and music business, every Britney and Lindsay in it, and all of us who keep it alive by joining the ranks of its fans.

Even before the Chipmunks enter the business, the movie has already started hinting at the shallowness of much of what is popular music. In a scene where Dave presents his demo to a record executive, the executive barely listens to ten seconds of it before telling Dave that it’s awful. It’s not edgy enough, it’s not new enough, and no one will sing it. The funny thing—Dave’s song is actually quite reminiscent of last year’s hit single from Death Cab for Cutie, the indie princes who didn’t sign with a major (aka pop) label until seven albums in. In other words, forget talent, forget quality, don’t even begin to think of going anywhere deep; if it won’t get stuck in every teenybopper’s head in under five seconds, we don’t want it.

And then the Chipmunks start to sing. The sound is cute and fun and nostalgic of all those years I listened to the Chipmunks Christmas Carols growing up. But when you think about it, their sound is actually incredibly annoying. If they were a band made up of real people, there’s no way anyone would listen to them. But as their manager Ian says, “They’re chipmunks who talk; people will come see them.” And even as the images of LA’s hottest crowding in for the Chipmunk’s shows make me want to laugh at their absurdity, there’s part of me that knows we have our own “talking chipmunks” too.

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