Hollywood continues its dig of past ideas to create modern day movies with "The Smurfs." With all the children's films coming out lately, this one needed to be something special to shine. Can Hollywood update the Smurfs for modern cinema or was this one idea that should have been left in the past?
Neil Patrick Harris plays Patrick Winslow (creative naming right?), an advertiser on the brink of his dream job and just about to start a new family. His life is thrown upside down when six blue critters known as Smurfs crash into his life. Things only get worse when the Smurfs start being hunted by Gargamel (Hank Azaria), an evil wizard wanting to harness the Smurfs pure essence for his magic. Patrick attempts to push the Smurfs from his life, but they quickly become an inspiration to him.
Director Raja Gosnell attempts to break the children's movie formula, giving the audience a human to see the world through, by focusing on the Smurfs and Gargamel, but the formula still peeks through as real world characters become more prominent. As a result, neither set of characters is given much chance to grow. Neil Patrick Harris disappoints by giving very little energy to his role. Even at his best moments, there just isn't anything likeable about his character. Meanwhile Hank Azaria is filled with his signature energy and carries the humor on the human end. Luckily the Smurfs are much more solid characters. They all grow from their experiences in the real world, but the time spent on Patrick makes the Smurfs’ changes feel sudden.
The movie is carried by the Smurfs themselves. Their humor, although a bit dated, gets a few smiles from all ages. They’re well animated and fit into their real world environments smoothly. This is good because the best comedy of the movie is physical. Their voice actors are all brilliant and give them depth. Jonathan Winters gives a particularly good performance as Papa Smurf and is one of the few influences to Patrick that feels real. Now if only they would stop saying "smurf" to replace words, they would stop being annoying.
Maybe it's because I'm not from Belgium or because I wasn't a child of the 80's, but I'm not sure who the Smurfs movie was created for. The script is fairly dull, giving a smattering of butt jokes for the children and subtle winks for the adults, with the majority of it being slow and empty. It attempts to play off of the nostalgia in its viewers, but very few people actually care about the Smurfs. Do they? Several references to the TV series are confusing and seem to imply the movie is intended as a prequel.
By the end of "The Smurfs" movie there were a handful of good moments that lingered with me, but I was mostly bored. I took my five year old cousin and he wanted to leave an hour into it. So if this movie wasn't made for an adult or for a child, then who is it for?
One "Smurf" out of Smurf...I mean Five
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