★ (1 out of 4)
What kind of hateful Snooterpoot would dare say a discouraging word about “Smurfs,” an animated family fluffball with music? Cut to me sheepishly raising my hand.
I have a Smurf allergy. These tiny, blue-skinned creatures, all-dressed-in-white, were originated by the Belgian comic artist Pierre Culliford, known as Peyo, in 1958. Fans loved them and still do. These bird-brained bluies have spawned five movies, a bonanza of comic books and toys as well as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series that ran on NBC throughout the entire 1980s and whose influence on dumbing-down kiddie programming is still being felt today.
Especially in this movie. I loved a lot dumb stuff when I was a kid, so rock on with your youthful obsessions, Smurfs fans. Just don’t ask the rest of us to swallow the Kool Aid. This insipid excuse for a movie shouldn’t happen to a Smurf or anything Smurf adjacent. The film’s dialogue uses smurf as every part of speech—nouns, verbs, adjectives, you name it—like a child’s game that makes me smurfing crazy. “What the Smurf!” “Smurf you!” “I think I just smurfed my pants.” These are actual lines from the movie.
The new film, misdirected by Chris Miller from a void of a script by Pam Brady, enlisted rock diva Rihanna to produce and take the role previously voiced by pop princesses Katy Perry and Demi Lovato. I’m talking about Smurfette, the only female Smurf, which should tell you something about what’s going on behind the scenes. Rihanna’s Oscar-begging song is “Friend of Mine,” featuring the words “friend of mine” relentlessly repeated to an unstoppable beat. I’m still not convinced a friend would do this to me.
Smurfette leads the Smurfs on a mission to rescue Papa Smurf (voiced by John Goodman), who’s been kidnapped by evil wizard Gargamel and his even nastier brother Razamel, both voiced by JK Karliak and both Smurf haters. The plot driver is a magic book that the Smurfs can only retrieve by traveling to the real world, meaning a generic-looking Paris and London that don’t look like fun at all.
...[W]hy bury yourself in the avalanche of banalities crashing down from planet Smurf?
Smurfs have descriptive names like Brainy, Hefty and Vanity (I’d like Bitchy if the name’s not taken.). Still, Papa Smurf's brother (Nick Offerman) is plain-named Ken. And it looks like they ran out of inspiration when it came to the Smurf played by a suddenly humorless James Corden, here dubbed No Name Smurf. Such wit. Imagine if Disney was too lazy to name the seventh and youngest dwarf, Dopey. The mind boggles.
Look, I feel the pain of busy parents who need a movie to distract their kids for an hour or so. But why bury yourself in the avalanche of banalities crashing down from planet Smurf? There are alternatives. The humor, heart and artful intelligence of, say, “The Wild Robot” and “Flow” are right there waiting to challenge young minds instead of rotting them.
I have a blind spot about “Smurfs” that I can’t get past. Am I alone in thinking that “Smurfs” is force-feeding empty calories to its brainwashed family audiences? Probably not since the score is cratering at 20 percent on rotten-smurfing-tomatoes. But why batter Smurf escapism that only lasts for 92 minutes? Why? Because this heavy-handed, toxic fluff slogs along so laboriously that I found myself saying out loud, “Make it stop.” OK, I need help. But you can bet your last smurfing smurf that I’m not going to get it from “Smurfs.”