When I was a kid, The Smurfs were a constant presence on my television screen, especially on Saturday mornings. While they were never my favorite, there was something comforting about the community of kind-hearted blue elflings, each with a name that signified their one outstanding trait. This was long before I ever cared that they were a creation of Belgian artist Peyo. Years later and this multimedia franchise has grown to include two successful films by Sony Pictures and one misguided, unnecessary reboot in 2017. And now it’s Paramount Pictures’ turn to try and keep them relevant with the simply-titled Smurfs, and the result will have you wishing Gargamel’s cat Azrael would finally get his wish and devour them once and for all.
Smurfs has largely been promoted as a movie for superstar musician Rihanna, who voices Smurfette, produces the film, and contributes key songs integral to the story. Unfortunately, Rihanna’s voice does not fit for Smurfette at all. Rihanna’s voice is great in other things, such as the hit animated film Home from 2015, but it’s not expressive or exuberant enough for Smurfette. So with the character being the centerpiece, it’s already a major hurdle. Making matters worse is an unbearable hip-hop dance party kicking things off, with Papa Smurf (John Goodman) manning the turntables like he’s DJ Kool. No thank you!!
The story gets going when Papa Smurf is kidnapped by Razamel (JP Karliak), the older and more evil brother of Smurf nemesis Gargamel, who is also voiced by Karliak. They’ll have to save him, of course, meaning the Smurfs will have to put their various talents together for such a dangerous adventure. That’s a problem for No Name Smurf (voiced by James Corden), and you should be able to figure out why. He’s got no obvious talents, no “thing” that he can call his own, which makes him a misfit in a colony of blue misfits, basically.
Smurfs is directed by animation vet Chris Miller, known for directing Puss in Boots to ridiculously great success. It has a script by Pam Brady, known for her work on South Park, Team America: World Police, and the underrated Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken. All of those projects are clever and mature in different ways, but you won’t find any of that in Smurfs. Instead, you get cheap gags and an overload of easy pop culture nonsense. Even the story’s core plotline, that of No Name’s identity crisis, gets smurfed to the background.
If there’s a plus side, it’s that Smurfs is relatively ambitious in attempting to turn the franchise in a different direction and expand on the mythology. Nick Offerman voices a brand new character, Ken, Papa Smurf’s estranged brother who has lived in our world, seen in live-action, long enough that he understands humanity better than the rest. He even lived in Paris and had some weird relationship with Mama Poot (voiced by Natasha Lyonne) of the fuzzy race of Snooterpoots. Sandra Oh voices Ken’s daughter, Moxie, who appears to be a twist on the fanfic Moxette Smurfette character, only she’s like a ninja agent or something. Dan Levy plays Razamel’s beleaguered assistant, Joel, who desperately needs better job references. A wholly uninteresting aspect of the plot involves the search for a magical book that Razamel, a forgettable baddie at best, needs so he can join some cool clique of evil wizards.
Visually, Smurfs is designed to resemble Peyo’s comics, but enhanced with a mix of modern computer animation and live-action. Miller, who worked on the classic film Cool World which also combined those techniques, delivers a crisp, vibrant blend of 3D and 2D animation that pops from the screen. It’s just a shame that it couldn’t be in service of a better movie because . Smurfs does the blue cartoon mascots and their fans no favors. But if there’s a reason to smurf it to the theater, it’s the brilliant SpongeBob Squarepants short, SpongeBob: Order Up, that precedes it.
Smurfs opens on July 18th from Paramount Pictures.
