The late Looney Tunes maestro Chuck Jones had an existential rule about cartoon animals.

They could walk upright, talk a blue streak and even have a Flatbush accent, so long as they were fundamentally most concerned with the things a duck, a caged tweety bird or a wascally wabbit would fret over — not being somebody else's dinner.

The people who revived "Alvin and the Chipmunks" for the big screen took that advice to heart. What are chipmunks all about? Nuts. Gathering nuts. Eating nuts.

Occasionally singing. And maybe sneaking off to watch "SpongeBob."

This is the movie that does what their 1960s and '80s TV shows and later big screen incarnations did not. It shows us how three singing rodents came to live with that exasperated songwriter, David Seville. That's a novel touch that makes this kiddie comic franchise worth reviving.

Tim Hill of "Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties" directed this three-writer script ("Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" vet Jon Vitti's hand is obviously here). The movie dashes off into a Chip N'Sync celebrity plot, a family-comes-first riff on showbiz kids, bubble-gum hip hop (and the producers, David Cross, funny) who suck the life out of teen talent and turn them into Lindsay/Britney et al.

But the stuff that works best is the off-hand interplay between sassy "tween" chipmunks and their human guardian. One time, he takes a conk to the head. Alvin instantly switches to "OK, I'm gonna need trash bags, a shovel," all the implements necessary to dispose of a body.

The effects, blending live-action trickery with digital animation (digital chipmunk in a vacuum cleaner?), are top-drawer.

No, it isn't a holiday classic. There isn't that much ambition there. But "Alvin and the Chipmunks" nicely blends up-to-date one-liners with the nostalgically sentimental. For instance, Dave Seville's house number, "1958," is the year songwriter Ross Bagdasarian sped up his tape recorder and rode "The Chipmunk Song" to the top of the pop charts. The Chipmunks cover Bagdasarian's 1950s hit, "The Witchdoctor," "Funky Town" style.

Thanks to "Alvin and the Chipmunks," the Fab Fur make a comeback any pre-K kid would love.