\n\tIf you look at the two films that are owning the box office this year, \u201cA Minecraft Movie\u201d and \u201cLilo & Stitch,\u201d it\u2019s clear that we\u2019re in a moment where a lot of parents are taking a lot of children who are not very old to the movies. Suddenly, we\u2019re in a universe where PG is king. Eras where super-wholesome kiddie fare rules the roost tend to come in cycles \u2014 there was a famous one back in 1990, when the first \u201cTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles\u201d film jolted Hollywood by opening at $25 million, an insane amount of money back then (the film wound up as the #4 box-office performer of the year, right behind \u201cGhost,\u201d \u201cPretty Woman,\u201d and \u201cHome Alone\u201d). Given the general dire straits the movie industry is facing today, it should be happy to find success anywhere it can, and if that means that energized fodder for children is what\u2019s hot, so be it. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tGiven that 2025 is shaping up that way, it feels poetically right that we\u2019re now getting the first Smurfs<\/a> movie in eight years. It is called, quite simply, \u201cSmurfs,\u201d which has a certain brand confidence about it, kind of like when the Beatles titled what would come to be known as the White Album as, simply, \u201cThe Beatles.\u201d Of maybe it\u2019s just that \u201cSmurfs\u201d is the first Smurfs movie I\u2019ve seen \u2014 and I\u2019ve seen them all, because I do this, dear readers, so that you don\u2019t have to \u2014 that\u2019s explicitly modeled on \u201cTrolls,\u201d the 2016 fairy tale that I think is one of the five most inspired animated films of its decade.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSmurfs\u201d isn\u2019t half as good. The reason? It\u2019s a Smurfs movie. There are serious limitations to that which I\u2019ll discuss shortly. For a moment, though, let\u2019s take note of the fact that \u201cSmurfs,\u201d like \u201cTrolls\u201d (and its lesser 2020 sequel, \u201cTrolls World Tour\u201d), is a pop musical, which means it\u2019s got EDM sequences with ancient dance moves and, at one point, a woe-is-me anthem called \u201cAlways on the Outside\u201d that sounds like mid-period ELO. That it\u2019s headlined by a major music star, Rihanna<\/a> (who is one of the producers), singing and voicing the role of Smurfette, the lone female Smurf (and the only one with Nancy Sinatra\u2019s hair). That it costars James Corden<\/a> as the voice of No Name Smurf, a sad sack brimming with anxiety, because there\u2019s no thing that he does (that\u2019s why he has no name), and this makes him a version of Justin Timberlake\u2019s neurotically downbeat Branch in \u201cTrolls.\u201d And that the movie, which begins in Smurf Village, a hidden enclave whose locale is quickly uncovered by the villain (a twist right out of \u201cTrolls\u201d), then skips around from place to place, even moving through portals, making this the first Smurfs movie that effectively unfolds within a multiverse.<\/p>\n \n\tAt this point you may be wondering: Are we having fun yet \u2014 or, more to the point, as much fun as our 8- or 9-year-old? The answer to the latter question is a decisive no. The Smurfs, as any scholar of Smurfiana knows, are based on a Belgian comic-book series by the cartoonist named Peyo that was launched in 1958, which makes them sound venerable and original. But when you watch a Smurfs movie, there\u2019s a reason that the characters come off as blandly derivative.<\/p>\n \n\tIs it because each of them looks like the fusion of a hobbit, the Keebler Elf, Poppin\u2019 Fresh, and one of Disney\u2019s Seven Dwarfs (notably Dopey), and that they\u2019re named just like the Seven Dwarfs? (In the case of \u201cSmurfs,\u201d the characters include Brainy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Hefty Smurf, Worry Smurf, Quiet Smurf, Moxie Smurf, and Sound Effects Smurf.) Yes, but it\u2019s also that despite the mild charm of these trait names, the Smurfs always seem\u2026the same! Like three dozen versions of the same character. Their whole thing is that they have to learn to work together, but they\u2019re already so uniform that in \u201cSmurfs\u201d that message comes off like a cuddly version of the Communist Manifesto.<\/p>\n \n\tThe Smurfs are in possession of a magical book that\u2019s one of a set of four, just like the Infinity Stones in the \u201cAvengers\u201d films. If the villain, an evil wizard named Gargamel, can steal it and gather the entire set, he\u2019ll rule the universe. Gargamel is voiced by JP Karliak as a dastardly effete British scoundrel-magician who feels like a knockoff of a kiddie villain I think has much more personality \u2014 Cedric the Sorcerer on the great Disney animated series \u201cSofia the First.\u201d Gargamel has a brother, Razamel (also voiced by Karliak), who is even more effete. On the other end of the voice spectrum, there\u2019s a trio of ancient gruff Smurf leaders: the white-bearded Papa Smurf (John Goodman), who gets kidnapped by Gargamel, and also his brother, the red-bearded Ken (Nick Offerman<\/a>), and their long-lost sibling, the so-white-haired-he\u2019s-platinum Ron (voiced, with triumphant brio, by Kurt Russell).<\/p>\n \n\tAway from their village, the Smurfs land in places with photographic backdrops, like the Australian Outback and a section of the Autobahn outside Munich, with a twisty castle plunked down in the middle of it. There\u2019s an episode set in the land of the Snooterpoots, a tribe of feathery furballs led by Mama Poot, voiced by Natasha Lyonne in full frazzled fury. There\u2019s also a section of the movie where the Smurfs are visualized, in rapid-fire succession, in a Claymation world, as sketchbook drawings, as anime warriors, and as characters out of an \u201980s video game. This was actually cool! And there\u2019s the occasional funny line like, \u201cI think I just Smurfed my pants!\u201d \u201cSmurfs\u201d might be the best of the Smurfs films. It\u2019s an amiable diversion for kids. But with its blue McDwarfs crusading to be \u201cguardianeers of good,\u201d it\u2019s still hard to escape the feeling that \u201cSmurfs\u201d is a movie that puts the innocuous in innocence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you look at the two films that are owning the box office this year, \u201cA Minecraft Movie\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[88,15047,3713,15048,13808,14269],"class_list":["post-15857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-james-corden","tag-nick-offerman","tag-octavia-spencer","tag-rihanna","tag-smurfs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}