Smurfs uses familiar tricks and catchy tunes to reset the series, but is it too late?
After three feature film attempts between 2011 to 2017 to push The Smurfs brand back into mainstream culture, with diminishing returns, Paramount Animation is restarting with a new film, Smurfs. Losing the ‘The’ in the title is a futile way to differentiate itself from the previous set of forgettable films, even though this new film represents the best of the bunch. Smurfs is beautifully and creatively animated, and features catchy songs and skillful voicework, but still comes off as a stale retreading of tropes, jokes, and plot devices from superior animated films of the last decade.
The Smurfs are an old brand, having first appeared in comics created by the Belgian artist and animator Peyo in 1959, and then entered American pop-culture through an animated 1981 television series. Chris Miller (Puss in Boots) directs the new film, which follows the Smurfs of Smurf Village on a quest to find Papa Smurf after he’s kidnapped by one (of a few) evil wizards, Razamel. The voice cast is stacked, including Rihanna as Smurfette, James Corden as No Name, John Goodman as Papa Smurf, and also Nick Offerman, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Octavia Spencer, Hannah Waddington, and on and on the cast goes. The voice acting is great and carries the story along at a mostly brisk pace, but while Smurfs doesn’t feel dated, its jokes are too familiar. Movies like The LEGO Movie, Inside Out, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse have delivered jokes and characters similar to, and better than, equivalent ones in Smurfs. Arguably, Smurfs is the watered-down, more young kid-friendly version of modern animation tones, which isn’t a bad thing. Smurfs is a heartfelt, but at times saccharine, tale of individual discovery with a beautifully rendered aesthetic, even when the moment-to-moment magical plot turns make absolutely no logical sense.
Smurfs will inevitably please young children who are being introduced to the Smurfs for the first time. The final twenty minutes of Smurfs feels drawn out, an endless cascade of magic portals, wizard dueling, and the redundant recounting of the film’s messages regarding the importance of both community and individualism, which may test a young kid’s patience (it tested mine). The previous (The) Smurfs movies are so irrelevant from mainstream pop culture that it’s hard to tell if the brand has any lasting power, but things may have been different if this Smurfs was released in 2011, with its catchy Rihanna tunes to help the film break through. Of course, who am I to gauge the longevity of Smurfs. They’ve been around way longer than I have.
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Smurfs opens in theaters on Friday, 7/18.
