It’s barely been two years since we had a film with the big eyed, blue bodied, humanoid creatures but then I don’t think we can call ‘Avater’ a smurf movie. But 2017 was the last actual Smurfs film which made almost $200m so quite why it’s taken so long for another is anyone’s guess but rumour has it that its pop poppet Rihanna who has been the mover and shaker in getting a new film made and here she voices Smurfette.
With an opening scene about some evil space wizards looking for a fourth book of magical spells and enabling them to remove all the good in the world that sees the smurf communities boss Papa Smurf taken by evil warring wizards Razamel & Garganel. So after them go the smurfs or at least some of them including Smurfette, Jaunty, Hefty, Vanity, Worry, Brainy and Grouchy because those are their single characteristic. But joining them is No Name smurf desperate for his own moniker and surely ‘merchandising tie-in’ smurf was the obvious choice. There is also a ‘sound effects smurf’ – able to generate all manner of sounds and the filmmakers nod maybe to Michael Winslow’s phenomenal vocal talents in the Police Academy films but it’s a comic opportunity that’s soon pushed to one side. And to the gang of smurfs is also Turtle who is….well you get the gist. So their bid to rescue Papa smurf sees them in the real world but there’s far too few scenes of live action/ animation hybrid and when it does occur the animation looks a little raggy. Instead the plot flits between the two worlds plus inter-dimensions in a Marvel multiverse kind of way. And from Marvel it has borrowed a sequence where the smurfs breeze through various dimensions that includes anime, plasticine stop motion and kids drawings amongst in what is the stand out sequence in the film.
Smurfs looks as it might be expected – bright and breezy with a load of tunes from Rihanna that makes its feel more like a cynically extended promotional film for her back catalogue of songs but also includes two new tracks from her. As now seems de-rigueur with animated features there’s an all star cast of voices and alongside Rihanna is James Corden, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Kurt Russell, John Goodman and the now seemingly ubiquitous Hannah Waddingham – the UK version also has Rylan Clark and Jon Richardson with a barely a handful of lines between them.
This big screen relaunch of the Smurfs in 2011 saw it rake in a huge $563m with the two subsequent sequels taking in $347m and $197m so it is likely this reboot will do similar business but a slightly convoluted plot despite a 92 minute running time may not hold the attention of young children.
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here’s the Smurfs trailer……
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