Crew
Director – Chris Miller, Screenplay – Pam Brady, Producers – Jay Brown, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, Ryan Harris & Ty Ty Smith, Photography – Peter Lyons Collister, Music – Henry Jackman, Animation Director – Matt Landon, CG Animation – Cinesite (Visual Effects Supervisor – Chris Kazmier), Animation Production Design – Max Boas. Production Company – Paramount Animation/Domain Entertainment.
Voices
Rihanna (Smurfette), James Corden (No Name), Nick Offerman (Ken), J.P. Karliak (Razamel/Gargamel), John Goodman (Papa Smurf), Daniel Levy (Joel), Amy Sedaris (Jaunty), Natasha Lyonne (Mamma Poot), Kurt Russell (Ron), Sandra Oh (Moxie Smurf), Jimmy Kimmel (Tardigrade), Octavia Spencer (Asmodius), Alex Winter (Hefty Smurf), Maya Erskine (Vanity Smurf), Billie Lourd (Worry Smurf), Xolo Mariouena (Brany Smurf), Marshmello (Turtle)
Plot
Many years ago, Papa Smurf fled from the Intergalactic Evil Wizard Alliance with Jaunty, one of the four living books that combine to create ultimate evil, where he was able to turn Jaunty to good. In Smurf Village in the present day, No Name Smurf has a crisis over the fact that he has no specialised name and sets out to find what his is. Seeing this, Jaunty grants No Name some magical powers, but his use of these alert Gargamel’s brother Razamel to the whereabouts of Smurf Village and he abducts Papa Smurf. The other Smurfs then set out on a quest around the world using a magic portal to find Papa’s brother Ken, rescue Papa and stop Razamel obtaining Jaunty and reuniting the four books.
The Smurfs were the creation of the Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford who went by the name of Peyo. They first appeared in 1958 in the comic-strip Johan et Pirlouit (Johan and Peewit) (1952-67) and were greeted with such popularity that they gained their own comic-strip in 1959. They first appeared on screens with the animated film with Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1976), although their greatest popularity came through the Hanna-Barbera animated tv series The Smurfs (1981-90), which caused the Smurf phenomenon to go worldwide. The Smurfs underwent a revival with The Smurfs (2011) and The Smurfs 2 (2013), a due of live-action films from Sony Pictures Animation combining actors with CGI animated Smurfs. This was followed by the animated Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017). Not long after, French productions companies gave us a new animated series The Smurfs (2021- ), which has also been translated into English.
This new Smurfs film comes from the animation arm of Paramount Pictures. Director Chris Miller had risen up as a storyboard artist and voice actor for Ralph Bakshi and then at DreamWorks. He previously directed Shrek the Third (2007) and Puss in Boots (2011) for DreamWorks.
There was a lot of hate for this new Smurfs film when it premiered. I am trying to understand it, while trying not to read any of the other coverage in too much detail and allow it to influence me. I suspect that many of the haters are simply familiar with the Smurfs from tv reruns and have little memory or awareness of how annoying and irritable the characters were regarded when they gained mass popularity after appearing on tv in the 1980s. In sitting down to view the film, I found it neither any better nor any worse than any of the other Smurfs films – the worst of which, in my experience, is still The Smurfs 2.
The plot here is annoyingly lightweight. There is the magic artefact of a book that seems to have two modes, cutely cuddly and evil. Magic stuff happens. The Smurfs are propelled through a series of portals to real world locations – Paris, Munich, the Australian Outback – where they interact with live-action elements and a species of manic orange creatures called the Snooter Poots. There is really nothing much of substance to any of this – but then you don’t expect anything too much else from a Smurfs film. Perhaps one of the most pointless aspects is the introduction of Gargamel’s brother Razamel, who has never appeared elsewhere in the Smurfs mythos. This is an unnecessary addition in that it sidelines the prime villain of the Smurfs universe and even contorts to have Gargamel join the Smurfs in defeating his brother at one point.
There are a few modernisms that have crept in that will date the film – a sequence that is dependent on online meal delivery drivers and Smurfette developing an addiction to French Fries (that are nearly as large as she is), or Razamel’s assistant complaining that he only took the job to get a good LinkedIn reference. Perhaps the most derivative that the film gets is where it takes several of the Smurfs through a variety of dimensional realms where they are represented by children’s crayon drawings (replete with eraser), 2D animation, 8-bit videogame characters and as anime characters where the film seems to be trying a little too hard to borrow from the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse films.
The biggest issue that I had with the film (as it appeared a number of others also did) was the voicing. First of all, what seems obvious is that the voice roles have been cast with people that are in the headlines of the TikTok five-second attention span generation. There are a number of distinguished actors with a reasonable name present – John Goodman, Natasha Lyonne, Kurt Russell, Sandra Oh and Octavia Spencer – who sit alongside pop stars of the moment – Rihanna (who also produces the film and sings on the soundtrack). Into the mix we also for some reason get talkshow hosts – James Corden and Jimmy Kimmel – people who are known as djs! – Marshemello, DJ Snake – and Lea Elui whose only fame has been for a series of TikTok lip-synced dances. You often get the feel of a voice casting director who was desperate for packing almost anybody who had some celebrity of any description into as many corners of the film as they could be fitted and it not mattering what they did or even whether their presence was right for the role.
This indifference seems to be doubly the case when it comes to the voicing of Smurfette. Smurfette was a character introduced back in the original comics and is noted as the only female Smurf. We now live in the 2020s and the era of Women Rule the World. Rather than address the gender disparity, which The Lost Village at least did, Smurfs merely propels Smurfette to be the central character of the film. There has been a tendency to cast pop stars in the role before – Katy Perry, Demi Lovato – so having Rihanna here is no surprise. However, what just seems wrong is that Rihanna voices the role with a rasping, husky voice that seems to have dropped a whole vocal range between any of the other, far more girlish-voiced performers who played the role. It makes Smurfette seem an entirely different, streetwise character than the one we have ever had before.
Trailer here