‘Smurfs’ Reviews Sing the Blues for the Latest Peyo Feature Adaptation

The boon of bringing a globally beloved franchise to the big screen is that you have a built-in audience who know the characters, the world and the lore, and are eager to further explore one of their favorite story-lands. The downside to this is that with so much emotional entanglement, expectations run high, and filmmakers struggle to balance pleasing longstanding fans while attracting new audiences with a shiny update.

The latest entry in this list is Smurfs (opening Friday, July 18), Paramount’s fully-animated big screen adventure starring the characters created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo (Pierre Culiford), first introduced in 1958. After decades of comics, three animated television series and nine other feature-length outing, the pint-sized forest-dwellers return to cinemas in a globetrotting adventure featuring the voices of Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Billie Lourd, Xolo Maridueña, Kurt Russell and John Goodman.

Despite the megawatt star power, this illustration-inspired 3D take directed by Chris Miller (Shrek the Third, Puss in Boots) and penned by Pam Brady (Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken) has fizzled out with critics. Smurfs goes into its opening weekend with a mere 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (from 51 reviews) and a 33 on MetaCritic (21 reviews), the reboot is painted as “mediocre,” “unimaginative” and unlikely to charm any but the youngest moviegoers.

So far, Smurfs is scoring on the low end of the 21st century feature adaptations. Sony’s first live-action hybrid take, The Smurfs (2011), scored a 21% on RT (with an audience rating of 43%) and went on to earn $563.7M worldwide. The Smurfs 2 (2013) got the lowest critics’ score of the franchise with 14% but the highest audience rating at 56%, and earned $348.5M. Sony Pictures Animation’s 2017 title Smurfs: The Lost Village rated a 41% on RT (audience: 54%) but only took in $197.6M.

Alright, let’s get this clustersmurf over with… Here’s what the critics are saying:

“[T]his is one of those animated movies in which the characters periodically break into song, and sometimes even elaborate dance numbers. None of the songs, not even Rihanna’s “Friend of Mine,” proves particularly memorable … The Smurfs’ mission launches them into the real world […] which only serve as unpleasant reminders of Sony’s previous, misbegotten animated/live-action hybrids. The Australian section features a musical number showcasing CGI kangaroos, which even one of the characters aptly describes as ‘weird.’ It also serves to introduce us to the Snooterpoots — small, feathered, Minion-like creatures who will definitely be showing up at a toy store near you. Their leader, Mama Poot, is voiced by Natasha Lyonne, who uses her distinct gravelly voice to good comic effect.”

— Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter

“There’s 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.”

— Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“The star vocal turn of the very moderate new Smurfs film is Rihanna, phoning in an undemanding audio contribution as the female character named ‘Smurfette.’ But there is little to no music in this laborious slice of content …  [T]hough there are some almost-interesting surreal scenes when our heroes find themselves in weird alt-universe dimensions. There are also some decent gags featuring Sound Effect Smurf, who communicates in sound effects. But there seems to be a worrying assumption here that a film aimed at very little kids doesn’t need to have a very interesting or engaging story.”

— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (U.K.)

“In theory, the film’s vision is inspired, aiming to resemble a page from Peyo’s original comics come to life. The characters are 3D, but with exaggerated cartoon facial features. Effects around them — a stream of water, a blast of magic, a foggy cloud — are 2D, and their environments are shaded and colored to look like the setting of a comic. Occasionally, this results in a decent shot or two … By and large though, the film just looks cheap. It can’t figure out a way to integrate the characters into the world seamlessly, and the overall effect of the aesthetic often misses the mark, resembling the graphics of a cel-shaded video game made in 2003[.]”

— Wilson Chapman, IndieWire

“It’s mildly horrifying when [the Smurfs] gyrate for the camera like Addison Rae, even more horrifying when you realize how many jokes in this film are centered around weight (every Smurf has exactly the same body, why would you possibly introduce the concept of body dysmorphia into their world?) Suddenly, the Smurfs end up in actual, real-life Paris, yet never directly interact with a human person beyond scuttling past their feet. And no one seems at all concerned by the presence of tiny, blue elves at the discothèque, which renders every single live-action sequence pointless, while implying that the local drug supply is very, very good.”

— Clarisse Loughrey, Independent (U.K.)

“The best thing that can be said for the latest attempt to reboot the blue Belgian beings is that it maintains the light feel of a morning cartoon. Even with a brief SpongeBob SquarePants short running ahead of it, Smurfs — seemingly designed to be the least ambitious of all possible parent-child outings — passes in about 90 minutes […] You can almost feel IP-rights pressures animating the entire enterprise. See, there are other Smurf names out there. What about Corporate Mandate Smurf?”

— Jake Coyle, Associated Press

“The script, by Pam Brady (a writer on South Park and Hot Rod), at least shows initial glimmers of self-awareness, gently ribbing the Smurfs’ simplistic, characteristic-based naming convention […] Our hero is a character with no unique trait at all, the humiliatingly named No Name (voiced by Corden). A wiser, wittier film might have found an interesting angle for No Name’s identity crisis. Instead we have James Corden singing an interminably earnest ballad about ‘trying to find a reason to be strong,’ a sentiment we can sympathize with while watching this film.”

— John Nugent, Empire