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The Smurfs
| Released |
10 August 2011 |
| Director |
Raja Gosnell |
Starring
|
Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Sofia Vergara, Kevin James, Katy Perry, George Lopez, Jonathan Winters, Alan Cumming |
Writer(s)
|
J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick, David Ronn |
| Producer(s) |
Jordan Kerner |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
102 minutes |
| Genre |
Animation, comedy, family |
| Rating |
G |
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Something blue.
The Smurfs: little creatures with a song in their hearts and a smile on their lips. Living close with nature, they are teeny-weeny paragons of anti-consumerism. How strange that the film that bares their name contains some of the most shameless examples of product placement seen since Will Smith strapped on his Converse for I, Robot. The Smurfs endorse candy snacks, some high-profile retail establishments and even take their mind off the evil Gargamel by indulging in some cringe-worthy Guitar Hero antics. Yes, the little blue folk have gone to the dark side.
Despite these occasional winces of embarrassment though (and the fact that the cartoons were never all that entertaining in the first place), The Smurfs is surprisingly fun; a nicely anarchic family movie that keeps the schmaltz level to a minimum and isn’t afraid to address the stranger elements of its own mythology- like what exactly is the story with Smurfette anyway...? It’s also one of those rare occasions where the mixing of live action and CGI works rather well. Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays believably look like they’re interacting with the Smurfs throughout.
The story goes like this: While on the run from Gargamel, several of the more high profile Smurfs get sucked through a vortex into another dimension, landing in present day New York. To return to their own land, they must summon a blue moon and they enlist the help of stressed ad-man Patrick (Harris) and his pregnant wife Grace (Mays) to do so. The focus of the story is Clumsy, voiced by Anton Yelchin but really he is the least interesting character of the bunch; Katy Perry’s Smurfette works better and Jonathan Winters is perfectly cast as Papa Smurf. The real treat though is Hank Azaria as Gargamel. There is a lovely incongruity to his character prancing the streets of Manhattan and Azaria gives a highly physical and genuinely funny performance that owes a lot to his voice work on The Simpsons. His Gargamel is an entertaining mixture of Mr. Burns and the vocal stylings of Professor Frink (himself owing a debt to Jerry Lewis).
Barring the occasional gripe then, I was pleasantly surprised by The Smurfs. It could have been very, very annoying but instead is one of the better family films I’ve seen this year. It’s smurfing remarkable really.
- Linda O’Brien |
