Smurfs

I kept putting off going to see this, I’d heard it was awful but you know what? I didn’t loathe it. Now that’s saying something as from the outset it looked more like the seven dwarves had taken the wrong direction in the forest and found themselves in the wooded equivalent of twee-on-sea! It’s all about a “Smurf” with no name who is pals with “Smurfette” who is helping him go through some ten thousand-odd descriptors for his skills, but none of them seem to fit - especially the clog-making one! He soon finds himself embroiled in a megalomaniac wheeze by the evil sorcerer “Razamel” who is on the look out for a magical book that will enable him to join the league of extraordinary wizards (or something like that) and eradicate “Papa Smurf” and all “Smurfkind”. There now follows lots of “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” type scenes; the obligatory bit of inter-dimensional travel as well as lots of opportunity for Rihanna to belt out the soundtrack that’s clearly had much more creative emphasis put on it than the script - which is not great. It does move along well enough, though, and the story does pick up for about fifteen minutes of dastardliness towards an ending that introduces some magic to the proceedings. The quality of the animation isn’t really much to write home about, with some focus on the lead characters but too many wallpaper ones to make up the numbers in an eerily computerised and sterile fashion. Quite who this is for is interesting. The kids it’s aimed at won’t have a clue who they were, nor are they likely be very engaged by the sheer derivative lack of sophistication of the whole thing. Those of us who remember the annoying blue people and their equally annoying songs from the beginning of the 1980s might want to indulge in some nostalgia for (the last) half an hour, maybe, but otherwise it’s a long old ninety minutes that probably just didn’t need making at all.

The art style(s) were surprisingly good, better than I assumed from the trailers. The jokes, spoken and visual, also worked out really well in my opinion. I don't like the role dynamic of Gargamel and Razamel. They should've stuck with Gargamel alone and have him stick to his usual self. Too many characters "try to be cool". It's fine to have a "cool" character, but all of them trying to be? Dangerously close to Marvel's "the villains are just laughing stocks" situation. The story was barely coherent. It felt more like a "Alice in Wonderland" trip where individual, short ideas were lived out. Also, unnecessary deus-ex-machina moments that could've been written to be emotional and nice, but instead are resolved "magically" like that. The live-action scenes were completely unnecessary. Even more than in the two Neil Patrick Harris Smurfs movies. Like...completely unnecessary! And also kinda strange, because there were actual live-action humans, and then there's animated humans like Gargamel and Razamel, contrary to the other Smurf movies where Gargamel was also live-action. So, yeah. The movie would be better without those. So, overall, a bit disappointing. It could've been a really nice movie. The jokes are good, visual style and gags work REALLY well, but the main story was a mess to me. I guess it's fine if you care more about the characters than the story. The second live-action one's story but in this style, that would've worked nicely.

Awful movie, well not awful but far from good, it’s corny and unfunny.