INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film Smurfs. Please note that this is just one of the many movies I will have watched each year, and my initial grade for this film may change over time, for better or worse. To stay up to date on my thoughts about other movies and any potential changes in my opinion on this one, follow me on Letterboxd.
If you enjoy these reviews, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could share this newsletter with family and friends who might love receiving film reviews, classic movie lists, and Oscars projections straight to their inbox.
PLOT
Via Letterboxd: When Papa Smurf is mysteriously taken by evil wizards, Razamel and Gargamel, Smurfette leads the Smurfs on a mission into the real world to save him. With the help of new friends, the Smurfs must discover what defines their destiny to save the universe.
REVIEW
Back in my most youthful days, I was an avid watcher of Cartoon Network. I'm talking the pre-originals era, before Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, or The Powerpuff Girls ever hit the airwaves. My television routine featured a steady diet of Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, and a handful of other classics. Sure, I was aware of The Smurfs animated series that played in the early hours, but I never really bothered with it. Even as a kid, it felt like the TV equivalent of plain toast. So I’ll confess right off the bat that this review is coming from someone who’s never understood the enduring appeal of The Smurfs brand.
That’s why it’s surprised me to no end that this property, one that feels firmly locked into a pre-9/11 cultural worldview, has somehow endured through various film adaptations over the last decade-plus. None of them were particularly well-received, critically speaking, but they made just enough money to keep studios interested in dusting off the little blue people and trying again. Admittedly, I haven’t seen the live-action/CG hybrid Smurfs films that kicked things off in the 2010s (though I plan to knock them off my film logging list eventually), but I was intrigued when I heard that this new installment would be a fully animated reboot, no more “Smurfs in New York City” nonsense.
Titled simply Smurfs, this latest attempt is billed as a return to form, with a renewed focus on traditional animation and musical elements. I was invited to a press screening ahead of release but couldn’t make it, so I checked it out on Thursday previews.
And I can tell you that five minutes in I already knew I was witnessing an outright disaster. Without a shadow of a doubt, Smurfs is one of the worst films I’ve seen this year and easily one of the most dreadful animated features of the 2020s so far. It’s so bafflingly misguided and grating that I almost want to believe some kind of deliberate sabotage occurred during production.
Now, to give credit where it’s due, the animation is quite good. Visually, it pops. There’s a distinct style here that breaks away from the sanitized, overly glossy look that has plagued recent Pixar outings. This movie doesn’t have that problem. The aesthetic here is colorful and textured in a way that feels appropriately whimsical. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing that works.
The film boasts a huge voice cast of big names. Rihanna (who also contributed as a producer on the musical front), James Corden, John Goodman, Nick Offerman, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddingham, and Kurt Russell, just to name a few. And yet, somehow, nearly all of them feel miscast in their voice work. Either their voices don’t suit the characters, or they’re sleepwalking through the material with uninspired line delivery. It’s as if the casting department was more focused on celebrity name recognition than actual voice performance chemistry.
As for the music, this was supposed to be a musical, right? A genre that should, in theory, help carry weaker elements with catchy numbers and visual flair. But there’s shockingly little music here. What we do get is either bland and instantly forgettable or ham-fisted Rihanna needle drops that feel more like product placement than organic storytelling.
And then there's the story, or the format of what’s supposed to be one. The pacing is all over the place. Scenes feel abruptly stitched together, like chunks of the movie are missing entirely. The comedy tries way too hard to wink at the adults in the audience, jokes that feel like they were written by a committee of executives who wanted to try real hard to make the adults laugh while still playing to childish humor.
And if you’re one of those adults thinking of taking your kids to this, don’t. Your kids deserve better. There’s a massive catalog of genuinely entertaining and enriching animated films available, and this isn’t one of them.
Between this and Superman pushing a “being nice fixes everything” message that landed like a lead balloon with me, I’m starting to wonder if I’ve just hit my tolerance limit for sugary moralizing. In a time when the country and the world at-large feels like it’s unraveling at the seams, these simplistic, tone-deaf messages feel more alienating than uplifting for me.
Bottom line is that aside from the standout animation, Smurfs is an unmitigated disaster. It’s a perfect storm of miscasting, uninspired music, lazy humor, and a script that feels like it was patched together from a dozen conflicting drafts. My initial grade? A pathetic D+.
GRADING
I could have used this review before I went to see this. There was too much happening and I’m not sure who it was suppose to appeal to.