It’s no secret that Smurfs movies never actually worked. Back in 2011, The Smurfs released and it was a box office hit, a surprising $563M global gross with a $110M budget. And then the sequel earned $347M, which was a very big decay… so the studio maybe thought that appealing for younger audiences is the secret to make these movies work so they released a full animated film in 2017 with Smurfs: The Lost Village. Well… that film grossed only $197M on a (at least) small budget of $60M. You might’ve thought they would stop making these movies after realizing they just don’t work anymore but nope (well at least Sony Pictures gave up on it)! Paramount grabbed this franchise by its face and gave us not only the worst film in the entire franchise but also an awful movie in every mean possible.
“When Papa Smurf (John Goodman) is mysteriously taken by evil wizards, Razamel and Gargamel, Smurfette (Rihanna) leads the Smurfs on a mission into the real world to save him. With the help of new friends, the Smurfs must discover what defines their destiny to save the universe.”
It’s genuinely crazy how there’s absolutely nothing that saves this movie. I’m a big fan of the animation medium but this was just a total disaster. Starting off by the animation style, this movie is so ugly and generic looking, it doesn’t match the Smurfs vibe and it just didn’t work at all for me. Second complain gotta be the fact this film is a musical, and the thing is: the movies doesn’t want to be a musical, they just put random, forgettable, terrible songs throughout the entire movie. This film was definitely awful but the worst of all of it for me was the fact that Gargamel was not a villain in any part of the film, yes, Gargamel was on the Smurfs’ side until the end of the film. Gargamel was fully nice for the entire film, ENTIRE.
This plot of “trying to find my identity” is really stupid but the resolution of it all is somehow even worse than it could possibly be. And you might be thinking: oh but you’re not the target audience so why you’re getting so mad at a kids movie. And all I’ll tell you is this: this is not a movie that a child will enjoy, it’s dull and boring for kids. I had several children in my screening and they started running through the theater and making noises they just couldn’t pay attention to the film. So the only question I have is: what are their target audience? Because it certainly ain’t kids nor adults.
For this and many other reasons it’s safe to say that Smurfs is the The Emoji Movie of the 2020s. It’s from a big studio, but doesn’t know who’s it’s audience and brings some of the most stupid movie moments ever seen in animation. And to make it worse they couldn’t even be accurate and faithful to the Smurfs lore. It’s incredible how they achieved to make this this bad.
Smurfs is awful not only because it doesn’t know who its target audience is, but also because it has terrible songs, a stupid plot, bland visuals, and crazy decharacterization of characters. I don’t see even kids enjoying this one.
Smurfs releases in theaters on July 18.
