The Smurfs 2011 Film Review

Ladies and gents that since my Batman film review marathon went down so well that i'd look into doing another one. So the one that i'm thinking about doing i'm only doing the three recent films just because if I did all four feature films i'd start to get bored and go insane and so to start of hopefully this mini marathon a film none of wanted made by a director we know we don't want 2011's "The Smurfs" enjoy everyone.

The plot of the movie is Papa Smurf , Smurfette , Clumsy Smurf , Brainy Smurf , Gutsy Smurf and Grouchy Smurf suddenly found themselves in the middle of New York City being chased by arch nemesis Gargamel and his cat Azrael and the smurfs must find a way back home before it's to late. This plot is every child fantasy movie rolled into one and top of that the smurfs themselves don't even play that big of a role in the film.

Doing the voices for some of The Smurfs are Jonathan Winters as Papa Smurf and singer Katy Perry as Smurfette. Also doing voices for the film are the late Anton Yelchin as Clumsy Smurf , Fred Armisen as Brainy Smurf , Alan Cumming as Gutsy Smurf , George Lopez as Grouchy Smurf and Frank Welker as Azrael. In all honesty the voice acting in the film isn't that bad but the issue is it's that good either it's just OK at best.

Starring as the human characters we have Hank Azaria as Gargamel and Neil Patrick Harris as Patrick "Pat" Winslow. Also starring as the human characters are Jayma Mays as Grace Winslow , Sofía Vergara as Odile Anjelou and Tim Gunn as Henri. Honestly the acting from the live action actors isn't much better then the acting from the voice actors which is a shame because both sets of actors are clearly trying but they just can't make this script work.

Since this is a live action / CGI hybrid that does mean that we have to talk about the animation which wasn't brought to us by an animation company but instead it was brought to us by effects company Framestore with Tippett Studio doing the animation for Azrael. Now the animation on the smurfs isn't that bad it looks like the kind of thing that you'd see in a live action / CGI hybrid film which is honestly the best thing that I can say about the animation.

Since when Azrael gets goes fully animated man does it look bad and I don't just mean like kids film bad no I mean it looks laughably bad. Which is a shame because they actually did use a live action cat for alot of the scenes in the film so why they chose have the character be animated in only a few scenes is truly beyond me since it doesn't look at all in fact you can actually tell when it's being fully animated because of how fake it looks.

Now for those that don't know everything to do with The Smurfs from movies to TV shows to video games and books is based of the comic book of the same name created by cartoonist Peyo. I think it goes without saying that this film has nothing to do with the comic whatsoever the only thing that it takes from the comics is the titular smurfs , Gargamel and the name and that's it it's smurfs in name only since everything about the film is different and i've not even read the comic books and I can tell that the two have nothing in common apart from what I mentioned that's how loose this adaptation is.

Hell this movie has nothing to do 1980's Hanna-Barbera show since the smurfs are removed from there medevil fantasy land and placed in modern day New York. Which is a very bad thing since the medevil setting could allow for an actually decent film but because Alvin & The Chipmunks made money and Sony likes money they decided to copy that movie only they didn't realise that the Alvin & The Chipmunks live action movies suck.

Ths film is an hour and forty minuets and to the film's credit the pacing actually isn't that bad it actually goes by rather quickly which trust me for this film is a very good thing. Honestly I can't think of a single scene that should be dropped since the film flows as well as it can do , however if I were to try and make the film better i'd start with a page one re-write because the script is so freaking bad and I honestly do feel that re-writing the script would allow for a better film to come out of it.

Sadly this is a comedy and so that means that we have to talk about the jokes that are present in the film. The jokes aren't actually that bad at least in my opinion yes there are alot of jokes which didn't get a laugh or even a smile out of me but there are a few jokes that did get a smile out of me however those jokes are few and far between with alot of the jokes just being painfully unfunny to see play out which for a comedy is not what you want or even need for that matter.

Overall to say that this film is just ok would be huge understatement yes there's nothing in this film that will harm it's kid audience which let's face is fr this film was made for and targeted at. However there;s nothing in here for the adult fans of The Smurfs either and for a family film there needs to be a balance between stuff for kids and stuff for adults and this film leans for to much on being a kids film as such this film gets a 5 out of 10 from me and as you can see by the above poster it doesn't look like i'm out of the bad Smurfs movie zone quite yet.