I have a long love affair with Alvin and the Chipmunks. It started when I was 6 or 7—too young to know it was wrong to have a crush on a cartoon chipmunk that could talk—and when it was announced that they were making a live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks movie with a computer-generated Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, my heart broke a little inside. That’s not the way my chipmunks are supposed to be experienced.

The thing about the original Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoons that makes them not believable but not preposterous either is that EVERYONE in them is a cartoon. Everyone is fake! But in these live-action movies, when Dave and the chipmunks’ shady ex-agent are both living, breathing human beings (played by Jason Lee and David Cross, respectively, in both the first installment and the “Squeakquel”), the chipmunks remain illustrations. And that ruins it.

It’s funny when a cartoon chipmunk gives a cartoon boy a wedgie. It’s okay when a cartoon girl has a crush on a cartoon chipmunk. But when a real-life adult woman coos at the sight of pretend, singing chipmunks, well, that’s just absurd.

But if you disagree, if the computer-generated costars don’t bother you, then keep this in mind: The jokes are lazy, the songs sung by the Chipmunks and the Chipettes are completely predictable Top 40 hits recognizable to anyone who’s ever listened to mainstream radio for 30 seconds in their life (“If you liked it, then you shoulda put a ring on it”), and I know it’s just a kids’ movie meant to entertain 8-year-olds, but would it have killed ’em to slip in a few treats for the adults? I mean, the only grown-up joke that they manage to sneak in is a reference to The Silence of the Lambs (which I did laugh at, yes, even though it wasn’t that funny).

Oh well. At least little kids will like it. Because, just like me when I was 6 or 7, they don’t know it’s wrong or weird to, as a human, be in love with a cartoon chipmunk.