What’s with all the live-action movies?

Earlier this week while reading about the controversial “The Golden Compass,” I stumbled across news that a movie based off of one of my favorite childhood TV series, “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” was being made. This caused me to quickly and eagerly Google-search “Alvin and the Chipmunks” for information about this movie. What happened next was heartbreaking.

Yet again, the movie industry proved to be the foil to reliving my childhood for two glorious hours, and they went ahead and made this a live-action/computer-animated film. This is absolutely ridiculous. Time and time again, Hollywood producers feel the need to crush my favorite childhood TV shows in favor of some crappily-done, CGI-imaged tripe. This, of course, is not the first time they have done this. In fact, this is the sixth instance that Hollywood has screwed me over from seeing a cartoon show be made into a cartoon movie (for those unenlightened few, the first five would be both “Garfield” movies, “TMNT,” “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,” “Underdog,” and lastly, “Transformers”).

Why is it that Hollywood can’t just make a semi-decent script, find some cartoonists to draw up old cartoons, and make it a movie!? I’m not quite sure if the correlation between “don’t-even-bother-to-consider-seeing” and “live-action with CGI graphics” movies actually exists, or if it’s just some random chance that these kinds of movies never do well.

I can very well guarantee you that I would have, regardless of plotline and quality of writing, seen “Underdog,” and “TMNT” in theatres. But no, I waited to see “TMNT” until I could see it at home, and haven’t bothered to see either “Garfield” movies. Sadly, I have consigned “Alvin and the Chipmunks” to be a movie that I will not see ever, because they had to go and do CGI. I would be in line, waiting to see this movie opening weekend were it in cartoon, because really, who doesn’t love three chipmunks that can sing and entertain people? I know I did and still do!

But no, these Hollywood producers and writers think they know better than me and go ahead and produce CGI movies (regardless of numerous flops in the past ten years of shows I loved...). Please, Hollywood! Stop making CGI and go back to cartoons! At least then you’ll have my $8.50 for a movie!