Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Raja Gosnell
Quick Impressions:
Please don’t kill me, but I liked The Smurfs. Now let me be clear, do I think it is a great movie? No. But do I think it’s a horrible movie? Oh my smurfness, no!
Yes, there was a lot of blue humor (pun intended, of course, but statement also offered in earnest). And it probably does recycle a lot of material from movies like Alvin and the Chipmunks and Garfield, but I didn’t see any of those movies because they looked dumb to me, so I didn’t mind.
If you do not have children, you really have no business going to see The Smurfs, and if you do go without children, and you don’t like it, that’s your own fault. If you haven’t been able to watch the previews (which have been on TV and in theaters all summer) and determine that you wouldn’t like The Smurfs, then you’re the one who smurfed up for paying movie theater prices to see it. Smurf on you. (I meant that last “smurf” as a substitute for “shame,” lest you be too smurfed off at me.)
Wisely populated with TV stars and marketed to an audience that probably spends a fair amount of time watching network TV (i.e. parents who don’t get out much because they have small children), The Smurfs would be a superior movie if it appeared on TV (as I’m sure it will in the future, many, many, many times). When it does come on TV, people will watch it, and people will like it. They liked it in the theater. This is the first movie I’ve seen all summer that’s earned repeated raucous laughter and applause from its audience.
The Smurfs may not be the best movie ever, but as a fan of the Smurfs (i.e. someone who watched the cartoon faithfully every Saturday morning as a preschool-aged child), I can assure you with complete honesty that Raja Gosnell’s movie is ten million times better than the cartoon’s previous big-screen effort, Smurfs and the Magic Flute, which I saw with my parents in the theater back in 1983. I believe my reaction to that at the time was, “What the smurf???”
For those who haven’t seen it, the first Smurf film is much stranger than the cartoon, obviously dubbed from another language with characters who speak far, far too quickly. (Imagine, “It is Smurfzilla!” and you’ll get the idea.) The one bright spot in that movie was a character who kept saying over and over again, “Let’s smurf a party! Let’s smurf a party!” Maybe it’s not really a bad movie. Quite likely, its story has something to do with Mozart’s opera. But as someone who saw it as a four-year-old, I can assure you that it’s pretty far removed from the American version of the cartoon.
The Smurfs, on the other hand, stays pretty faithful to the American cartoon’s premise. Yes, the Smurfs have been needlessly transplanted to New York City, but the previews more than prepared any potential audience for this complication, so anyone who was unpleasantly surprised has been a victim of his or her own negligence. As always Gargamel is chasing the Smurfs, trying to capture them. We don’t see Johann, Pewee, or Hogatha. But Gargamel, Azrael, and a number of prominent Smurfs are in attendance, along with a few added humans. It’s not Citizen Kane, but let’s be honest, if you take a bunch of toddlers to a screening of Citizen Kane, how much laughter and applause do you think you’ll hear?
The Good and The Could Have Been Better:
Even though it did include some disgusting jokes (i.e. Gargamel mistaking a port-a-potty for a cauldron), I thought that overall the tone of the movie was appropriately sweet. The human characters had problems that will resonate with many young parents. (Surely every non-baby in attendance has had to deal with the emotional turmoil that a coming baby brings to a household. Even some toddlers know that when a baby comes along, it changes everything.)
Granted, the problems aren’t explained or dealt with in any depth. But this is a movie for little children. Anyone who is not blue, a wizard, or a digitally animated cat should not be alone on the screen for longer than two minutes at a time. Is the movie realistic? Do the characters convincingly portray adults trying to navigate the problems of life in all its complexity? No! Of course not! This is The Smurfs.
Best Action Sequence:
I loved the early scene where Gargamel is running amok in Smurf Village. The breathless chaos of this scene really resonated with me because my family accidentally arrived late to the movie, due to a mix-up with the show times, and we were actually trying to find seats during this on-screen melee. Attempting to wrangle an excited toddler in the dark while at the same time not spilling our popcorn or her smurfy blue Icee was just as exciting as the action onscreen. Really, during this scene, I felt like the movie was in 4D (though I’m sure I’ll experience that in earnest soon enough since both kids were intrigued by the Spy Kids preview).
Best Joke:
Throughout the entire movie, kids were laughing out loud (genuine, heart-felt laughter because they were delighted and amused, the kind of laughter only innocent children can produce). For me, the funniest moment came when Hank Azaria’s Gargamel took literally the figurative remark that “the competition will kill us.” (I also sort of liked his obsession with “emerging from the smoke mysteriously.”)
Lots of the comedy is physical. Some of the jokes are kind of…well…
Gargamel mistakes an ice bucket for a chamber pot in the middle of dinner at a fancy restaurant. Not exactly high-brow humor. (But, then, haven’t we all been on a date or at a business dinner that might have been substantially improved if something like that had happened at the restaurant—to someone else, of course?)
Best Scene:
The movie fired on all cylinders as the Smurfs tried to escape from Gargamel in the toy store. But I actually liked a touching moment between Clumsy and Grace, when she told him, “Nobody is just one thing. You can be whatever you want.”
Given that all the Smurfs have attributes for names, and that name-calling is such a common feature of early elementary school, I thought that was a lovely little moral. The movie was full of diamonds in the rough like that, moments that could have sparkled if the script had just had a bit more polishing.
Best Surprise:
I loved the blue moon. For experienced filmgoers, that the blue moon rose and provided the perfect resolution for the movie’s two parallel story lines really should not be a surprise, but I was a little bit surprised at how pleased I felt to see it happening. The blue moon is beautiful, so is the camaraderie of the Smurfs, so is the love Patrick and Grace Winslow share, and so is Sofia Vergara. Let’s smurf a cheer!
Best Scene Visually:
Some of the action scenes were almost blurry, and afterwards, my husband and I wished we’d coughed up the money for the 3D (but it’s so hard to make that call when you’re not sure how long your two-year-old will wear the glasses). I thought what I saw of Smurf Village looked gorgeous, and the blue moon—how can you beat that? I’m a sucker for the moon even when it’s a more ordinary white or silver.
The Performances:
You really feel for the actors. The script is not exactly stellar (lunar, just when it counts, but never stellar), and they don’t have much to work with. They have to work hard, and they do.
Hank Azaria goes all out as Gargamel. He makes a much more convincing cartoon character than his animated feline sidekick, and I mean that as a compliment. He’s really fantastic as Gargamel, and I personally think it takes a lot of courage to go all-out in that fashion. If you’re doing it for an Oscar, that’s one thing. If you’re doing it for The Smurfs, that’s quite another. Not everything Gargamel did was funny, but not all of that was Hank Azaria’s fault.
Neil Patrick Harris did a perfectly good job as nervous father-to-be Patrick Winslow and an even better job of cheerfully promoting the movie in a seemingly endless series of First Looks and making-of specials. Jayma Mays was also perfectly charming as his wife, Grace. The actors seemed to enjoy being a part of The Smurfs. Granted that may have been due to their acting talent, but I’m not completely convinced. There were a lot of children laughing happily in that theater.
Sophia Vegara lights up the screen as Patrick’s difficult boss, cosmetics mogul, Odile. Her part doesn’t call for much range, but she does have stellar comic timing (even when the comedy itself is…merely lunar).
The people voicing the Smurfs—most notably Katy Perry as Smurfette, Alan Cumming as Gutsy, Fred Armisen as Brainy, George Lopez as Grouchy, and Jonathan Winters as Papa—do seem to be having fun. A lot of little girls in that audience seemed to be loving Smurfette. And Anton Yelchin’s Clumsy is pretty smurfin’ adorable.
Overall:
Is The Smurfs an entertaining, satisfying movie? The answer depends on how old you are. The kids in the theater loved it. I haven’t heard such a whole-hearted, full-bodied positive response to a movie in a long, long time. Kung Fu Panda 2 (by far the best children’s movie I’ve seen this summer) didn’t get that kind of response, and the only noise you heard during Cars 2 was little kids crying because they were bored and tired. My family laughed out loud during Winnie the Pooh, but we were pretty much the only people in the theater (not who laughed. I mean present).
Kids loved this movie, and in my experience, they usually love movies like this—full of lots of slapstick, silly moments, and jokes about going to the bathroom (which is a very important part of life for two-and-three-year-old children).
If pressed, I can’t in honesty call it a good movie, but it’s a fairly innocuous one, and it was pleasant to watch, delightful at moments. Surely focus groups were involved since it contains everything kids seem to love—a toy store, a dog, balloons, the moon, fireworks.
If your kids want to see it (as mine did), you might as well go. They’re almost guaranteed to have an ultra-smurfy time. And if you find yourself bored or underwhelmed by the movie (as you might at moments), you can always close your eyes, plug your ears, and go, “Lalalalalalalalalalala!”