Does the new Smurfs movie find its thing?
★½
Rated G, 92 minutes
Hollywood is so lavishly stocked with guys named Chris, it can be hard to keep up. I had assumed, until I checked, that Smurfs was the work of Christopher Miller, the co-director of The Lego Movie, though it seemed oddly conventional coming from a filmmaker who used to be known as a hip innovator in the field of family entertainment.
As it turns out, this reboot is by his fellow animator Chris Miller, who brought us Shrek the Third and Puss in Boots – although both do wacky fantasy lands, pop culture shoutouts and hero's journeys, so the difference is only a matter of degree.
There's less risk of getting confused about the Smurfs, small blue creatures who live in a woodland village and possess one notable trait apiece, sometimes represented by a signature prop: Brainy Smurf, voiced by Xolo Mariduena, wears glasses, Vanity Smurf (Maya Erskine) carries a mirror, and so on.
These markers aside, they all look identical, except for Papa Smurf (John Goodman), who has a beard and wears a red cap rather than a white one, and the blonde-haired Smurfette (Rihanna), by tradition the only female Smurf, sculpted out of clay by the evil wizard Gargamel (J.P. Karliak), who intended her as a femme fatale to lure the other Smurfs into captivity.
This bizarre but long-standing origin story is more or less the only interesting thing about the Smurfs, and was central to Smurfs: The Lost Village, their last big-screen vehicle in 2017 (in that one Smurfette was voiced by Demi Lovato; before that she was Katy Perry).
In this latest reboot we appear to have regressed: the focus is on the brand-new character of No-Name Smurf (James Corden) who hasn't found the 'thing' that would let him stand out from the crowd.
Smurfette's 'thing,' essentially, is being a girl, which is a tricky matter and always has been, although in her current incarnation she's also meant to be tough and strong, meaning she's resolved her own identity issues and can spend her time reassuring the protagonist that being a total blank doesn't make him any less terrific.
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