movie review
The Smurfs
Stick with the 1980s TV Smurfs
If you were a fan of the Smurfs TV series back in the 1980s, you might want to steer clear of this movie. In fact, even if you weren’t a fan, you might want to steer clear. Yes, the Smurfs are adorable. Yes, Neil Patrick Harris has a few funny moments. Yes, it’s cool hearing Jonathan Winters as the voice of Papa Smurf. But overall, the filmmakers rely way too heavily on crude humor, one-liners, and inappropriate references.
The story begins in the enchanted Smurf Village, where 100 of the blue, gnome-like creatures live in their little bubble of happiness. As they’re preparing for the Blue Moon Festival, the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) and his cat Azrael plot to find and destroy the Smurf’s home. He’s after their youth-preserving essence, though you might miss this fact if you’re not paying attention.
When Clumsy Smurf (voiced by Anton Yelchin) inadvertently leads Gargamel to the village, it appears that his evil plot might come to fruition. Until, that is, a Blue Moon vortex sucks in Clumsy, Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters), Gutsy (Alan Cumming), Grouchy (George Lopez), Brainy (Fred Armisen) and Smurfette (Katy Perry) and plops them smack in the middle of New York City’s Central Park, where cosmetics executive Patrick Winslow (Neil Patrick Harris) is throwing a big party for his arrogant boss (Sofia Vergara).
Clumsy accidentally falls into one of Patrick’s boxes, and the other Smurfs follow him to the apartment where Patrick and his pregnant wife Grace (Jayma Mays) live. After their initial shock at seeing the tiny blue creatures, the couple realizes they’ll need to help the Smurfs evade Gargamel and return home.
If anyone could have done justice to bringing the popular 1980s cartoon to the big screen, it would have been Raja Gosnell, who also directed Never Been Kissed, Beverly Hills Chihuahua and two big-screen adaptations of Scooby-Doo. But alas, this movie is lacking in a variety of areas, including a plot that was surely drafted in about two minutes, the overabundance of crude humor, and the rampant product placement, including Samsung, M&Ms, Guitar Hero, Apple computers, Katy Perry’s song I Kissed a Girl, the list goes on…
Sure, there are a few laughs, like when the personality-named Smurfs joke about their relatives back in the village (“Nobody misses Passive-Aggressive Smurf”), and when Patrick begs them to stop singing that annoying happy song. There’s also a subplot about Patrick embracing fatherhood. I guess when actors start having kids of their own, they start making kids’ movies. Elton John, Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, and Johnny Depp are just a few.
But unless you’re a major fan of all things Smurf, you can probably catch The Smurfs on DVD somewhere down the line. Because of the inappropriate content mentioned above, I don’t recommend it for kids younger than seven, even though its target audience should be much younger.
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