Smurfs_Review

Will the kids love The Smurfs' As one of the film’s cuddly little characters posits: “Is a smurf’s butt blue'” It would be a very churlish child indeed who would emerge dissatisfied from this fast-paced blend of animation and live-action adventure that takes the inhabitants of Smurfland through a vortex into the big, bad world of the Big Apple. (The story’s tagline is, not unexpectedly, “Where the smurf are we') Where else but in worldly New York City could a handful of little blue boy/men (and a single female named Smurfette) ride atop a yellow cab alongside an ad for the Blue Man Group and not attract undue attention' Where else but in Gotham’s famed F.A.O. Schwarz toy store could they be mistaken for the latest in animatronic technology and pursued by feckless, fanatical shoppers' Where else but in Manhattan could their archenemy, the evil but mostly inept wizard Gargamel, be mistaken for a crazy homeless person, tasered and tossed in the slammer' For those of us whose childhood passed without exposure to these happy, industrious mushroom-house-dwelling creatures and the plethora of comics, cartoons and trinketry they’ve spawned, it may require a little effort to get with the program and hum along with the official Smurf song or to bear the endless combinations of the word “smurf” with other words — to wit, smurf-a-bunga — as well as cultural references: E.g. “No smurf left behind.” The story is simple as the six characters who find themselves sucked through a wormhole into a new reality, starting with venerable Papa Smurf (voiced by comic giant Jonathan Winters), along with Clumsy, Grouchy, Gutsy, Brainy and Smurfette. Kids are not going to ask why Gutsy wears a kilt and speaks with a Scottish burr while Grouchy has a Mexican-American accent and sounds a lot like George Lopez (who provides the voice). Nor are they going to delve too deeply into the motives of Gargamel (played over-the-top camp/nasty but not really scary by Hank Azaria) who hopes to extract their “happy little essences” to bolster his magical powers. Adults may wonder a bit about the decision to borrow heavily from every episode of the ’60s TV series Bewitched in creating a plotline about a guy named Patrick Winslow (played straight by not-so-straight Neil Patrick Harris) and his struggles to come up with the right ad campaign for the haughty head of cosmetic company Anjelou. Still, the film moves along at a quick enough pace (and with a short enough running time) that youngsters are not going to get too antsy in their seats before the happy outcome. And there are a few useful life lessons along the way, i.e. that Clumsy isn’t only clumsy — “nobody is just one thing” — and that “you never give up on family.” Kids are sure to find it smurf-errific, smurf-ilicious or just plain smurfy. Adults will happily settle for smurf-ectly inoffensive.