'The Smurfs' (English)
Directed: Raja Gosnell
Cast: Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, George Lopez
From a popular comic book series created by Peyo, comes ‘The Smurfs’ – an adorable group of little blue beings that live in a mystical village somewhere in medieval Europe.
The film begins with Clumsy, one of the smurfs in the village, wreaking havoc wherever he goes. But cute as they are, none of the other smurfs (there are almost 100 of them with just one girl) takes his clumsiness in good humour.
With happiness a way of life in the smurf village, in walks Gargamel (Hank Azaria with a bucktooth, bald head and an exaggerated body language), an evil wizard with his feline sidekick Azriel, who wants to use the essence of smurfs to further his magical powers.
To escape him, the smurfs flee and 6 of them land up in New York City by mistake, where they’re ably assisted by a married couple, Patrick and Grace (Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays), who are expecting their first child.
The rest is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps the danger of adapting a successful comic series into a film is that more often than not, you lose sight of what made it so popular. Though ‘Spiderman’, ‘Superman’ or even ‘X-Men’ (ok, ok! Wolverine was a let-down but the super hot Hugh Jackman adequately made up for a loose script) had different faces and many characters, each was so well-defined that even if it was blink-and-you’ll- miss appearance, the audiences that grew up with these superheroes could identify them. That is the missing ingredient in ‘The Smurfs’.
Here, you have a watered-down version of the original, which generates a few laughs now and then and has a couple of ‘aaww moments, but it fails to connect with the audience. Unless you’re a five-year old, there’s nothing you want to take home except a hard-to-stifle yawn. For every animation-3D film that has hit theatres recently, this is probably the only one that has wasted 3D.
And that’s not the only thing wasted. What is Neil Patrick Harris doing in this film? He may be wondering the same thing. Hitting himself with a broom and having a few Papa moments with his unborn child, this film may not be a career suicide, but it wouldn’t add anything to it. After her performance in ‘Glee’, as the tightly-wound, nervous Emma Pillsbury, it’s kind of refreshing to watch Jayma Hays loosen up but she brings nothing to the table.
Sofia Vergara (of ‘Modern Family’), who plays Harris’s bitcheralla boss, is as gorgeous as ever but her meanness looks ridiculous and forced. Hank Azaria, as Gargemel, is probably the only saving grace in the film. His skip-hop- and-jump walking style and a couple of wisecracks about the smurf village reduces boredom and pulls the film along.
Among the voice-overs, it’s Smurfette (Katie Perry) that’s most disappointing. Smurfette personifies every stereotype female characters that has ever hit the movie screens. She is a shopaholic twit who yearns for more dresses and has none of the sexy-oompf Katie Perry is famous for. What could have completed the cliché was a prince to sweep her off her feet to live nauseatingly happily-ever-after – the filmmaker probably didn’t want to push it and has shown some mercy on the audience.
Despite all things that are forced and wasted, ‘The Smurfs’ is not a must-miss film. It does have its moments, however few they might have been. It may hurt you a bit to pay to watch the film, but you may want to think about this – with the release of any animation film, all kinds of expensive merchandise hits the market and parents are often pressured into buying them.
Take your kids to watch ‘The Smurfs’ and I guarantee, there isn’t going to be a whisper of anything blue and small.