Today's Review: The Smurfs

How many kid's movies do you want to bring out Sony? You know they'll probably incur my wrath, just look at my Zookeeper review. But I used to love The Smurfs, and clearly you think nothing is sacred anymore. Mainly because what starts out as a nice little nostalgia trip into the quaint village of the Smurfs quickly goes tits up as due to some random plot device they end up in New York.

Yes, the Smurfs in New York, the mind boggles. I guess kids today aren't satisfied enough with the capers of little blue men (and one woman) being chased around a forest by an evil wizard, so they have to be introduced to a story about a couple in New York who are about to have a baby, and the husband has a stressful job as an advertising executive under a cruel boss named Cruella Odile (that name sure sounds familiar).

I'm not going to go into too much detail here, because it's getting late, and I already pointed out the main things wrong with this movie in the last "things that shouldn't talk end up talking, freaking a guy out, then helping him" movie. The human element is stupid, especially since it's been overdone. It ends up being pushed into the background anyway, because there's no real tension in that story, we're just trying to root for the good little Smurfs trying to get home. I guess this is the 21st century, and everything has to have a modern feel about it, but again there are constant references to things that adults would probably recognise, it's a cheap shot that is employed in so many movie nowadays, and I hate it. If you want to make me happy watching this movie as an adult, just have it set in the damn Smurf village.

The Smurfs isn't an abysmal movie. At least there's some semblance of plot progression, and the actors do perform adequately with the one dimensional stupid roles they're given. There was a point at the beginning of the movie where I was sure they weren't going to mention that Smurfette was in fact created by Gargamel, but thankfully they have stayed true to the old cartoon. Still, it's a small consolation, seeing as this movie is pretty bad. Kids will probably love it, sadly, but I wouldn't advise you go out of your way to watch it.

My rating: 1/5