Blu-ray Review: ‘The Smurfs’ Inspires Feelings of Intense Unhappiness

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CHICAGO – Here is an alleged family film made with all the heart and invention of a cynical business deal. Not a single person involved in the production appears to have any concept of what constitutes quality family entertainment. It’s essentially 103 minutes of product placement, with the biggest product being the Smurfs. There’s also room for Rock Band, Google, M&Ms, the Blue Man Group and every single business located on Times Square.

Unlike James Bobin’s marvelously heartfelt comedy, “The Muppets,” which dug deep into the spirit of Jim Henson’s original work, Raja Gosnell’s “The Smurfs” uses Peyo’s beloved characters as mere vessels for stale cultural references. Just as “Star Wars” led to the dumbing down of mainstream American cinema, the Genie in Disney’s “Aladdin” inspired generations of lazy filmmakers to construct entire kiddie franchises out of stitched-together homages and in-jokes. Once Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) quips, “I kissed a Smurf and liked it,” you’ll feel as if the art of cinema had just died.

Blu-ray Rating: 1.0/5.0

As the director of “Big Momma’s House,” “Scooby Doo” and “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” Gosnell is clearly uninterested in grappling with anything other than the shallowest of caricatures. That makes him a perfect fit for the Smurfs, since they are each cardboard figurines with one-dimensional personalities defined by their first name. Clumsy Smurf (Anton Yelchin) is clumsy. Gutsy Smurf (Alan Cumming) is gutsy. Papa Smurf (Jonathan Winters) is the father figure. Smurfette is the girl. Brainy Smurf (Fred Armisen) wears glasses and starts every sentence with the words, “My calculations indicate…” before being pummeled by his peers. Grouchy Smurf (George Lopez) is grouchy rather than grumpy because he clearly had no intention of ripping off a certain Disneyfied dwarf.

Neil Patrick Harris is feeling blue in Raja Gosnell’s The Smurfs.
Photo credit: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

These characters are already less than compelling, but Gosnell makes no effort to engage the viewers in their plight. Instead he recycles the same tired formula borrowed by every unimaginative filmmaker when tackling fantastical material. He simply takes the creatures out of their magical habitat and plunks them in the Big Apple for a series of fish-out-of-water gags (think “Elf” and “Enchanted” without the charm). Add a David Seville clone as the exasperated, milquetoast everyman (in this case, Neil Patrick Harris), and you’ve got a recipe for mediocrity.

As the bumbling villain Gargamel, Hank Azaria hams it up like a low-rent public access performer, while accompanied by a cackling cat whose animated expressions are just plain creepy. It’s astonishing to consider how this simple-minded script was the work of four writers: J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick and David Ronn. Aside from the pop culture shout-outs, the only joke in the film is the Smurfs’ use of the word “smurf” in place of countless other words, particularly expletives. This conceit inspires dialogue like, “Oh my smurf!” and “Smurf me!” The jolly blue vexations are also prone to incessantly belting their tuneless Smurf anthem—as a ballad, a rock number and a battle chant. Yet the writers pretend to be superior to their own material by having Harris complain that the Smurfs’ behavior is annoying. Sorry Stem, Weiss, Scherick and Ronn, but acknowledging that something is annoying doesn’t make it any less annoying. The clear intention of “The Smurfs” is to reboot the outdated franchise and make a smurf-ton of money, but after enduring this abysmal dreck, audiences are guaranteed to never, ever, under any circumstances want to hear the word “smurf” again.

The Smurfs was released on Blu-ray and DVD on Dec. 2, 2011. Photo credit: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment

“The Smurfs” is presented in 1080p High Definition (with a 1.78:1 aspect ratio) and is accompanied by English, French, Spanish, Chinese Mandarin, Chinese Putonghua, Chinese Cantonese, Korean, Thai and English Description audio tracks. The three-disc combo pack is packaged and cost-inflated just in time for the holidays, with a Blu-ray, DVD and UltraViolet Digital Copy of the film, as well as an additional 22-minute short, “The Smurf’s Christmas Carol,” with Grouchy Smurf (who else?) standing in for Scrooge. An unexpected highlight of the cartoon is the 2D animation, reminiscent of the hit ’80s Saturday morning program, which is used for Grouchy’s central dream sequence, but merely appears to be a cost-cutting choice rather than an inspired stylistic technique. Despite its brief running time, this cartoon actually makes an effort to develop the character of its central Smurf, thus making it a considerable improvement over the feature. It’s maddening to see how the sole character-building scene for Smurfette was left on the cutting room floor, and is included in the disc’s small collection of deleted scenes.

In Gosnell’s audio commentary, he highlights the various in-jokes that he included for Smurf fans, and says that the film originally began with Gargamel’s marionette Smurfs (which admittedly would’ve been a far funnier intro). A second commentary track includes all four writers, along with producer Jordan Kerner and visual effects supervisor Richard Hoover, who promise that they’ll bring back more Smurf characters for the inevitable sequel (can’t smurfly wait). Among the three brief featurettes is a discussion with animation director Troy Saliba about the awkward process of bringing Peyo’s fantastical artwork into the realm of live action realism. In order to resemble convincing mammals, the Smurfs were given translucent skin, while a space was placed between their eyes. The effects work appears to have been painstaking, yet one wonders why the Smurfs had to exist in a 3D realm anyway (oh yeah, money). In an extended featurette, Azaria admits that he found his character annoying, and thought that his sarcastic asides to the camera would make him more endearing. Winters says that at the ripe age of 85, he considers himself “lucky to be doing anything other than planting geraniums” (this misguided project is clearly his “Hot in Cleveland”).

Rounding out the disc’s extras are an infuriating “adventure game,” music video, over nine minutes of effects progression reels and only twenty-five seconds of staged “blue-pers.” Yet the most laughable special feature of all is the interactive Second-Screen Experience labeled, “Smurf-O-Vision,” where families are invited to shift their eyes between their TV and their iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. When a particular event occurs in the film, a related image appears on the second screen. So, for example, when Clumsy Smurf blows bubbles, kids can pop bubbles on their iPad. I predict that this feature will be far more popular with captive parents and babysitters, since it will give their eyes a reason to avert away from the unmitigated awfulness unfolding on their TV screen.

By MATT FAGERHOLM Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com [email protected]