If you look at the two films that are owning the box office this year, “A Minecraft Movie” and “Lilo & Stitch,” it’s clear that we’re in a moment where a lot of parents are taking a lot of children who are not very old to the movies. Suddenly, we’re in a universe where PG is king. Eras where super-wholesome kiddie fare rules the roost tend to come in cycles — there was a famous one back in 1990, when the first “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” film jolted Hollywood by opening at $25 million, an insane amount of money back then (the film wound up as the #4 box-office performer of the year, right behind “Ghost,” “Pretty Woman,” and “Home Alone”). Given the general dire straits the movie industry is facing today, it should be happy to find success anywhere it can, and if that means that energized fodder for children is what’s hot, so be it.
Given that 2025 is shaping up that way, it feels poetically right that we’re now getting the first Smurfs movie in eight years. It is called, quite simply, “Smurfs,” which has a certain brand confidence about it, kind of like when the Beatles titled what would come to be known as the White Album as, simply, “The Beatles.” Of maybe it’s just that “Smurfs” is the first Smurfs movie I’ve seen — and I’ve seen them all, because I do this, dear readers, so that you don’t have to — that’s explicitly modeled after “Trolls,” the 2016 fairy tale that I think is one of the five most inspired animated films of its decade.
“Smurfs” isn’t half as good. The reason? It’s a Smurfs movie. There are serious limitations to that which I’ll discuss shortly. For a moment, though, let’s take note of the fact that “Smurfs,” like “Trolls” (and its lesser 2020 sequel, “Trolls World Tour”), is a pop musical, which means it’s got EDM sequences with ancient dance moves and, at one point, a woe-is-me anthem called “Always on the Outside” that sounds like mid-period ELO. That it’s headlined by a major music star, Rihanna (who is one of the producers), singing and voicing the role of Smurfette, the lone female Smurf (and the only one with Nancy Sinatra’s hair). That it costars James Corden as the voice of No Name Smurf, a sad sack brimming with anxiety, because there’s no thing that he does (that’s why he has no name), and this makes him a version of Justin Timberlake’s neurotically downbeat Branch in “Trolls.” And that the movie, which begins in Smurf Village, a hidden enclave whose locale is quickly uncovered by the villain (a plot twist right out of “Trolls”), then skips around from place to place, even moving through portals, making this the first Smurfs movie that effectively unfolds within a multiverse.
At this point you may be wondering: Are we having fun yet — or, more to the point, as much fun as our 8- or 9-year-old? The answer to the latter question is a decisive no. The Smurfs, as any scholar of Smurfiana knows, are based on a Belgian comic-book series by the cartoonist named Peyo that was launched in 1958, which makes them sound venerable and original. But when you watch a Smurfs movie, there’s a reason that the characters come off as blandly derivative.
Is it because each of them looks like the fusion of a hobbit, the Keebler Elf, Poppin’ Fresh, and one of Disney’s Seven Dwarfs (notably Dopey), and that they’re named just like the Seven Dwarfs? (In the case of “Smurfs,” the characters include Brainy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf, Clumsy Smurf, Hefty Smurf, Worry Smurf, Quiet Smurf, Moxie Smurf, and Sound Effects Smurf.) Yes, but it’s also that despite the mild charm of these trait names, the Smurfs always seem…the same! Like three dozen versions of the same character. Their whole thing is that they have to learn to work together, but they’re already so uniform that in “Smurfs” that message comes off like a cuddly version of the Communist Manifesto.
The Smurfs are in possession of a magical book that’s one of a set of four, just like the Infinity Stones in the “Avengers” films. If the villain, an evil wizard named Gargamel, can steal it and gather the entire set, he’ll rule the universe. Gargamel is voiced by JP Karliak as a dastardly effete British scoundrel-magician who feels like a knockoff of a kiddie villain I think has much more personality — Cedric the Sorcerer on the great Disney animated series “Sofia the First.” Gargamel has a brother, Razamel (also voiced by Karliak), who is even more effete. On the other end of the voice spectrum, there’s a trio of ancient gruff Smurf leaders: the white-bearded Papa Smurf (John Goodman), who gets kidnapped by Gargamel, and also his brother, the red-bearded Ken (Nick Offerman), and their long-lost sibling, the so-white-haired-he’s-platinum Ron (voiced, with triumphant brio, by Kurt Russell).
Away from their village, the Smurfs land in places with photographic backdrops, like the Australian Outback and a section of the Autobahn outside Munich, with a twisty castle plunked down in the middle of it. There’s an episode set in the land of the Snooterpoots, a tribe of feathery furballs led by Mama Poot, voiced by Natasha Lyonne in full frazzled fury. There’s also a section of the movie where the Smurfs are visualized, in rapid-fire succession, in a Claymation world, as sketchbook drawings, as anime warriors, and as characters out of an ’80s video game. This was actually cool! And there’s the occasional funny line, like, “I think I just Smurfed my pants!” “Smurfs” might be the best of the Smurfs films. It’s an amiable diversion for kids. But with its blue McDwarfs crusading to be “guardianeers of good,” it’s still hard to escape the feeling that “Smurfs” is a movie that puts the innocuous in innocence.
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From Variety US