The Smurfs

Introduction

To start with, I'm going to regurgitate the intro to the review I did a few months ago of the cartoon compilation released prior to this film:

It may surprise some, but like most childhood favourites, The Smurfs have been around for a while. They almost certainly hit a peak during the 1980's but were like my own personal faves Tintin and Asterix around for a lot longer than that. Similar to my favourites as well, the creator of The Smurfs was not English, dammit. No, he was a Belgian cartoonist called Peyo and the date the Smurfs came into existence was 1958.

Starting life as simply side characters in a comic strip, the Smurfs became popular quite quickly and graduated to their own strip. Led by wise leader Papa Smurf, the Smurfs are instantly recognisable with their blue skins, white costumes and own English language variant and by the 80's were ubiquitous in their presence, a decade where cartoon heroes made the leap from comic strip to fame and fortune (think Garfield for example...). The Smurfs were helped by a long-running Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, a series that ran almost throughout that decade and consisted of 256 episodes and 7 specials.


OK, now onto the new film…

The Smurfs are preparing for the Festival of the Blue Moon, but preparations are interrupted when Clumsy Smurf manages to lead evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) to the Smurf village in the Enchanted Forest. Trying to escape with their lives, a handful of Smurfs end up being sucked through a mysterious portal that only opens during the time of the blue moon.

Being only 3 apples high, the Smurfs are transported to New York, the Big Apple - but unfortunately Gargamel and Azriel the cat follow them through. Gargamel wants the Smurf's very essence in order to provide him with magic power and will stop at nothing to get it. The Smurfs, though, manage to outwit him and find themselves in the company of couple Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays), who are expecting a baby.

Patrick is the newly promoted Vice President of Anjelou cosmetics, run under the dictator-like stewardship of Odile (Sofia Vergara). Patrick has two days to put together a new advertising campaign for the impatient Odile, who doesn't want what she asks for but what she needs, but she doesn't know what she needs or she'd ask for it - or something. Oh, and oddly enough, the Smurfs only have about two days to get home…


Audio

I wasn't going to include an audio section but have to simply to mention the songs over the end credits, well one song. The first track is Ready To Go (Get Me Out Of My Mind) by Panic! At The Disco,  which is now officially my favourite track of the moment and probably one of the reasons why I'm more positive about this film than I maybe expected.

Extras

There are a fair few and this is a double play with both Blu-Ray and DVD so some extras are duplicated (those only on the Blu-Ray marked as BD):

Find The Smurfs game - didn't try this so no idea what this is


The Smurfs Fantastic Adventure Game (BD) - not so fantastic but may keep the kids amused, this is a simple enough platform game but rather slow and unresponsive controls on my Sony player made this more of a chore than I think was intended.

Deleted & Extended Scenes - didn't watch these so no idea if they add to the film

The Smurfs: Comic Book to the Big Screen - did quite like this short featurette that looked at the origins of the cartoon creation (although not in depth) and then focussed on the work to bring them to life for the modern big screen audience

Going Gargamel - another featurette focussing on Hank Azaria's evil-ish wizard

Blue-pers (BD) - a couple of specially created cartoon bloopers, not worth the effort


Happy Music Montage (BD) - one track with a lot of film footage, not sure who this is aimed at

2 Commentaries (BD) - didn't listen to them so no idea if they're any good, but as this is the Smurfs and a children's film, I'm going to guess there's nothing substantial involved in either…

Smurf Speak: Meet The Cast (BD) - another brief featurette with some of the cast in the flesh talking about their characters


Smurf-O-Vision - I've never really understood this Blu-Ray obsession with these Bonus-View tracks or whatever you call them - you're either watching the film or you're not.  Anyway, this visual track consists of random appearances of Smurfs doing things as well as the odd interview with cast and crew. Bit of a boring track on Blu-Ray but is apparently interactive on iPad, iPod Touch and iPhones if you can be bothered to sync them to the Blu-Ray.

Overall

Let's be clear, there are no surprises in this film. It's very much paint by numbers with stock characters and a rather predictable story line with tacked on  messages. Still, I have to say that overall I actually quite enjoyed this. Although that isn't to say it's not without it's issues.

For starters, the two main human characters portrayed by Harris and Mays are your standard bland doe eyed movie couple whose main problem is your superficial advertising exec with an imminent deadline and whose job therefore under threat from a beautiful-ish but fascist-like boss. Not only that, but male character has expectant father issues, which Papa Smurf can teach him to accept, and female character used to be clumsy but now isn't and therefore can impart similar lessons on the clumsy blue dude just in time for him to defy all blue expectations and save the day.


Padding out the film to a decent length means that some sequences just appear tacked on, such as the rather bizarre Rock Hero computer game scene to Walk This Way with Harris playing Joe Perry and the Smurfs playing Run DMC. Also the entire storyline involving the cosmetics agency and the life lessons inherent in this type of film just don't sit that well here and feel much more plastic than usual.

That said though, the casting of Hank Azaria as Gargamel is inspired and the voice casting of the likes of Katie Perry (Smurfette), Jonathon Winters (Papa Smurf), Alan Cumming (new tartan-clad Smurf addition Gutsy, with obligatory Braveheart reference) and George Lopez (Grouchy) is pretty good - and in fairness just about all the voice casting is spot on. I liked the addition of Gutsy Smurf (who could have been a real disaster) and the inclusion of a Narrator Smurf was a nice touch. The transfer is excellent, even on DVD, and the  animation is all good. The Smurfs looks fine although they're not the more usual shade of blue and their skin texture reminds me of rubber bendy toys, and the animation of Azriel is good and quite amusing at times. Another nice touch is the
inclusion of the Hanna Barbara cartoon versions over the end credits.


This isn't the complete disaster you may think it is, but it's also no classic or masterpiece.  It's a piece of fluff in the usual way these films are, but it's nonetheless enjoyable enough. I watched this with two different audience of mixed ages with children aged from 6 to 14, and everyone including the adults enjoyed themselves. I'm not a huge fan of this type of film and thought the big screen version would be a travesty, but it's not. It could quite easily have been but has enough redeeming features and charm to escape that fate in my own opinion.

Not great but acceptable and provides more laughs than not…