A fun family film that children will love! Featuring an all-star cast and wonderful CG animation, “The Smurfs” definitely pays its respect to the original comic and animated series in bringing these characters to life. And as an adult who grew up as a child watching the animated series, I found the film to be quite entertaining!
© 2011 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. and Hemisphere – Culver Picture Partners I, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
DVD TITLE: The Smurfs
FILM RELEASE DATE: 2011
DURATION: 103 Minutes
DVD INFORMATION: 1:78:1 Anamorphic Widescreen, English, French, Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, English Audio Description Track, Subtitles: English, English SDH, Frencha nd Spanish
RATED: PG (For Some Mild Rude Humor and Action)
COMPANY: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
RELEASE DATE: December 2, 2011
Based on the stories by Maxwell Grant
Directed by Raja Gosnell
Characters by Peyo
Screenplay by J. David Stern, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick, David Ronn
Story by J. David Stern, David N. Weiss
Produced by Jordan Kerner, Executive Producer: Ben Haber, Paul Neesan, Ezra Swerdlow
Music by Heitor Pereira
Cinematography by Phil Meheux
Edited by Sabrina Plisco
Casting by Richard Hicks, David Rubin
Production Design by Bill Boes
Art Direction by Chris Shriver, Christian Wintter
Set Decoration by Regina Graves
Costume Design by Rita Ryack
Starring:
Hank Azaria as Gargamel
Neil Patrick Harris as Patrick Winslow
Jayma Mays as Grace Winslow
Sofia Vergara as Odile
Tim Gunn as Henri
Mr. Krinkle as Azrael
Jonathan Winters as the voice of Papa Smurf
Alan Cumming as the voice of Gutsy
Katy Perry as the voice of Smurfette
Fred Armisen as the voice of Brainy
George Lopez as the voice of Grouchy
Anton Yelchin as the voice of Clumsy
Jeff Foxworth as the voice of Handy
Kenan Thompson as the voice of Greedy
John Oliver as the voice of Vanity
Wolfgang Puck as the voice of Chef
Paul Reubens as the voice of Jokey
Gary Basaraba as the voice of Hefty
B.J. Novak as the voice of Baker
Tom Kane as the voice of Narrator Smurf
John Kassier as the voice of Crazy Smurf
Joel McCrary as the voice of Farmer
Frank Welker as the voice of Azrael
When the evil wizard Gargamel chases the tiny blue Smurfs out of their village, they tumble from their magical world and into ours — in fact, smack dab in the middle of Central Park. Just three apples high and stuck in the Big Apple, the Smurfs must find a way to get back to their village before Gargamel tracks them down.
Back in the late ’50s, Belgian cartoonist Peyo created the comic strips featuring small blue fictional characters known as the Smurfs. A big success in France, the Smurfs would receive various adaptations.
The first were in Belgium via TV animated shorts that were created in 1961-1967, a few of the shorts would be featured in the 1965 in the black-and-white animation “Les Adventures des Schtroumpfs” and then followed by a 1976 animation titled “La Flûte à six schtroumpfs” (The Smurfs and the Magic Flute) which would receive an English version that would inspire more full-length Smurf animated films.
But in America, where the Smurfs gained its popularity is through the 1981 animated TV series which was nominated many times for a Daytime Emmy Award and won the “Outstanding Children’s Entertainment Series” for 1982-1983. The animated series would broadcast on television through 1989.
In 1997, producer Jordan Kerner has been trying to get a “Smurfs” film created but it wasn’t until 2002 when Peyo’s heirs accepted Kerner’s offer and people were able to get their first look at the film via leaked footage on the Internet in 2008.
And in 2011, the first live-action/CG Smurf film of a planned trilogy was released in theaters in 2011. The film which was budgeted for $110 million received lackadaisical reviews from film critics but the film was popular among the younger viewers and earned over $559 million in the box office ensuring the film as a success for Columbia Pictures. It also helps that the film features all-star talent for the live-action scenes and the voice acting scenes including Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”), Jayma Mays (“Glee), Hank Azaria (“The Simpsons”), Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”) and Tim Gunn (“Project Runaway”). For the voices of the Smurfs, a few of the talent featured are George Lopez, Katy Perry, Alan Cummings, Kenan Thompson, Fred Armisen, Paul Reubens to name a few. And the film is directed by Raja Gosnell (“Big Momma’s Hosue”, “Scooby-Doo”, “Never Been Kissed”) and a screenplay by J. David Stern (“Shrek 2”, “The Rugrats Movie”), David N. Weiss (“Shrek 2”, “All Dogs Go to Heaven”) and writing duo Jay Scherick and David Ronn (both wrote “Zookeeper”, “Guess Who”, “Norbit”).
And now, “The Smurfs” will be released on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray and DVD on December 2nd.
“The Smurfs” revolve around life in the Smurf village as the Smurfs are preparing for the Blue Moon festival but Papa Smurf has sees a vision of Clumsy Smurf getting into trouble and making the Smurfs nemesis Gargamel (played by Hank Azaria) quite powerful. Gargamel meanwhile is planning to steal Smurf essence in order to make his power increase. But he needs to capture them and now knows where they may be located.
So, while the Smurfs are collecting Smurf roots, Papa Smurf tells Clumsy to stay in the village. Of course, Clumsy doesn’t really listen all that much and goes on his own to collect Smurf roots.  In the process, he is nearly captured and runs away from Gargamel and his cat Azrael. But what Clumsy ends up doing is leading Gargamel to the secret hidden Smurf village where he tries to capture one of them.
As the Smurfs run into hiding, Clumsy ends up going the wrong way (the dangerous way) and in order to help him, Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Grouchy, Brain and Gutsy go after him. But Clumsy ends up near a cliff area and falls off, fortunately the Smurfs end up rescuing him but each of them end up being sucked into a huge vortex which leads them to New York City. Both Gargamel and Azrael jump into the vortex to catch the Smurfs.
Meanwhile, we are introduced to Patrick (played by Neil Patrick Harris), an advertising marketing manager for a major fashion corporation owned by Odile (played by Sofia Vergara). As Patrick is in charge of coming up with new identity for the company and is under a lot of pressure to deliver, he is also worried for his pregnant wife Grace (played by Jayma Mays), mainly because he is not sure if he’s ready to be a father.
While Patrick is packing up boxes to take back home for work, Clumsy Smurf ends up falling in one of the boxes.  While Grace is sleeping and Patrick is working late on a logo, Papa and the other Smurfs sneak inside Patrick’s apartment and try to rescue Clumsy. But Clumsy ends up going into the bathroom and creating a ruckus. Meanwhile, as Grace goes to check on the ruckus, she finds Clumsy, while the other Smurfs are defending themselves against Patrick, who they think is an enemy.
But both Patrick and Grace are freaked out that small little blue creatures are in their apartment and talking to them, they learn that the Smurfs are trapped in New York City and must get home. But in order to get home, they need a stargazer and a blue moon which will re-open the vortex in order for them to return back to their village and re-build.
Meanwhile, Gargamel has taken control of the Belvedere Castle in NYC and begun using his magic to create a device that will replenish his magic but to also extract the essence of a Smurf to make himself powerful. But now he must find the Smurfs and capture them.
The following morning as Patrick leaves for work, he is unaware that the Smurfs have followed him in hopes of gaining access to a stargazer. But they end up causing him problems at work and Grace ends up having to bring them home. But while in the taxi to go home, the Smurfs see a star gazer (a telescope) at a nearby toy department store and leaves Grace inside the taxi. But with so many people around them and Gargamel not far behind, will the Smurfs survive in the streets of New York City? Let alone many kids who want to buy them at the toy store?
Meanwhile, what will happen to Patrick’s marketing campaign when Clumsy Smurf accidentally gets into a bit of trouble once again? And what about the vision of Papa Smurf about Clumsy Smurf doing something wrong and making Gargamel extremely powerful?
VIDEO AND AUDIO:
“The Smurfs” is presented in 1:78:1 Anamorphic widescreen and English, French and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital (and English-Audio Description Track). If you want the best presentation of “The Smurfs”, you definitely want to go for the Blu-ray release, especially the Blu-ray 3D release if you have a Blu-ray player and television set capable of 3D playback. But for the DVD version, you can still see quite a bit of detail from the threaded caps that the Smurfs wear, the strands of hair on Smurfette’s head to the pigmentation on the blue skin of the Smurfs. Possibly not as detailed as the Blu-ray version but still visible on DVD. For the most part, on DVD, the picture quality is very good.
As for audio, the audio features a lot of dialogue, music and also special effects for the action sequences. On Blu-ray, the lossless audio will definitely take advantage of the surround channels but on DVD, the 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack is also pretty good as there is good amount of LFE during the bass-driven sequences, the music – may it be the Smurfs singing or even Neil and the Smurfs playing “Guitar Hero Aerosmith”. The Dolby Digital soundtrack sounds very good but on Blu-ray, you definitely want to go for that version if you want a more immersive soundtrack and to hear the ambiance much more clearly.
Subtitles are in English, English SDH, French and Spanish.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“The Smurfs” come with the following special features:
- Find the Smurfs Game – Featuring a hide-and-seek remote control game in which you are shown a Smurf and with other Smurfs in the village, you need to find out where a certain smurf is hiding.
- Audio Commentary 1 – The first audio commentary features director Raja Gosnell who talks about the challenges of bringing the Smurfs to CG, the shooting process, scouting and shooting on location.
- Audio Commentary 2 – The second audio commentary features producer Jordan Kerner, writer J. David Stern, David N. Weiss , Jay Scherek, David Ronn and VFX Supervisor Richard Hoover.
- The Smurfs: Comic Book to the Big Screen – (8:16) Featuring the challenges in taking the Smurfs for a CG film, creating different personalities for each Smurf and more.
- Going Gargamel – (10:01) Hank Azaria talks about playing Gargamel and we see how much time it took to make the actor into Gargamel and behind-the-scenes footage and also the challenges of playing the role.
- Blu-Pers – (:26) Two very short bloopers.
- Happy Music Montage – (1:51) Short music montage of clips from the movie.
I was a bit skeptical when I first saw the trailer for “The Smurfs” in the theater. It’s been a long time since I have watched the cartoon on television but I was a big fan of the animated series and owned several of the toys when I was younger.
And while the animated series is dear to me because I watched it from grade school and even when I was in high school, here we are decades later and now I have a child in grade school, who has become interested in “The Smurfs” not so much because of the animated series (which he has never seen) but primarily because he enjoys the iPad video game.
So, it’s quite interesting how the younger generation have found about the Smurfs, may it be the video game or through the Happy Meal toys but needless to say, despite the big names attached to this live-action/CG film, my main interest is how much they writers strayed from the original storyline or in this case, from the cartoon.
And when it was all done, I can say that as a family film and a film for the children, it was a fun film! My eight-year-old enjoyed it a lot and for me and the wife, I’m a bit more easy on family films especially “The Smurfs” because they are targeted for a younger demographic. With that being said, my wife was turned off by the “Guitar Hero” scene and I admit, that was possibly the cheesiest part of the entire film.
But for me, there was a lot to love about the film. First, I think it worked in the favor of producer Jordan Kerner that this film was made in 2011 versus 1997 or in the early 2000’s because CG has developed a lot in the last decade and for the most part, I found the computer graphics to be very well-done.  Loved the detail on the skin of the Smurfs, loved the detail on the knit caps to the thorough planning on the color of the Smurfs to creating living beings via CG on the film (the special feature goes into details about how much the crew wanted the characters to come alive).
It helps to have popular TV talent such as Neil Patrick Harris, Sofia Vergara and Jayma Mays also involved with the film, especially the talent of Hank Azaria who is spectacular as voice talent for “The Simpsons” (and also the ’90s “Spider-Man” animated series) but even before then, he was fun to watch on “Mad About You” and “Friends”.  He did a fantastic job as Gargamel. And of course, you have a lot of voice talent involved in this film from singer Katy Perry to a long list of talent which include Jonathan Winters, Alan Cummings, Fred Armisen, George Lopez, Kenan Thompson, Jeff Foxworthy, Wolfgang Puck to name a few. And heck, you have voice acting legend Frank Welker (who also did the voice dub in the earlier Smurf’s animated films and TV series as “Hefty Smurf”) doing the voice of Azrael.
So, I appreciate the dedication of the crew honoring the original animated series and comic books but also giving new life to the characters for this live action/CG film.
With that being said, I know a major criticism by reviewers was that this film was “too kiddy” especially since it’s a rated PG film, not rated G.   But for me, “The Smurfs” was originally conceived for children back in the late ’50s, was targeted towards kids in the ’80s and I never expected anything dark or low-beat for this film. I was not expecting the writers to stray far off from the original storyline and expected a family film that would feature a lot of laughs and also cheesy moments (I sort of liken it to the live-action/CG animated “Alvin and the Chipmunks” films).
Sure, Neil Patrick Harris and the Smurfs rockin’ it to Aerosmith via “Guitar Hero” was possibly the lowest point of this film for me, but aside from those scenes…everything else was pretty fun and hilarious and for the most part, my son and I had fun watching it (although my wife wasn’t into the film all that much).
As for the DVD release, the DVD release features a good amount of special features and commentary and the DVD does look good. But if you want the best presentation in sound and audio, you want to go for the Blu-ray release, especially since it contains more special features than the DVD release.
Overall, for those who grew up watching “The Smurfs”, the good news is that the writers did fans a service by not straying to far from the original concept. Sure, there are some cheesy scenes but as a family film, I’m not going to be overly critical as this film was created for the kids. And as a fan of the original animated TV series, I had a fun time watching it as well.
With the holidays coming up, if you are looking for a fun family film to keep the kids busy during winter vacation or even during those long traveling commutes, I recommend give “The Smurfs” a try!
