The Smurfs Is Silly But Fun to Watch Once

Like many children of the 1980s, I grew up with the Smurfs. The cartoon about the little blue fellas were never my favorites, partly because Gargamel, the sorcerer always out to get them, gave me the willies, but I still watched the antics of Papa Smurf and the dozens of younger Smurfs by his side. Recently, I indulged in a bit of nostalgia when my friend Julie and I watched the recent feature film, and while it’s probably not a movie I would watch again, it was a fun trip to take once.

The movie is a mix of live action and computer animation, and its premise is reminiscent of Enchanted as several Smurfs, along with Gargamel and his cat Asrael, go through a portal and find themselves in New York City. Gargamel has evil plans for the travelers, while the Smurfs just want to get home. Helping them in their quest are a young couple, workaholic ad man Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and sweet-natured Grace (Jayma Mays), who is expecting a baby soon.

Slapstick abounds here, particularly in a raucous scene that takes place in a toy store, and the movie makes numerous references to other films, with my favorite being an extended nod to Gandalf’s conference with the moth in Fellowship of the Ring and subsequent rescue. Hank Azaria is a very campy Gargamel; I doubt he’d seriously scare too many kids, especially since Asrael seems by far the smarter of the two, but he poses enough of a threat to keep things interesting.

The film’s opening in Smurf Village is idyllic, and we get to see all sorts of little blue creatures with specific specialties. Only a few of them wind up in New York City: newcomer Gutsy (Alan Cumming), a stout-hearted, kilted Scotsman (whose presence among a bevy of mythical Belgian creatures remains unexplained); irascible Grouchy (George Lopez); indispensable Brainy (Fred Armisen); lone female Smurfette (Katy Perry); sage patriarch Papa (Jonathan Winters) and disaster-prone Clumsy (Anton Yelchin).

While Clumsy is arguably the central Smurf character, as he spends most of the movie feeling ineffective and unwanted before mustering his resolve for a daring rescue, Smurfette grows especially close to Grace, the first female she’s ever encountered aside from herself, and Papa is instrumental in helping to ease Patrick’s apprehension about fatherhood, with Winters’s warm reading my favorite of the voice performances. Harris and Mays are extremely likable here, and the way the Smurfs’ presence deepens their hosts’ relationship is very sweet.

I wouldn’t call the animation remarkable, and those Smurfs still look pretty weird against a live action backdrop, but it works, and the humor is hardly sophisticated, but I laughed. The movie does not take itself too seriously; this is as much for adults as for kids, with a hefty side of, “Boy, wasn’t this show we watched every Saturday goofy?” Yes. Yes, it was.