Smurfs review

SMURFS: 

OOF, THIS ONE MADE ME “BLUE”! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: * ½ out of 4

PARAMOUNT ANIMATION

Smurfette and her friends are back in Smurfs (2025)

 

            Oh boy, here we go again, those cute little blue creatures from Peyo’s comic strip pages and classic cartoon are back on the big screen in this new movie version of Smurfs. If you read my reviews for The Smurfs 2 (2013) and Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017) then you know I don’t have any nostalgic connections with the Smurfs franchise, I don’t hate or even dislike it, it was just never my thing. 

            Needless to say, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic when Sony Pictures’ Smurfs movie from 2011 was released which took the Smurfs out of their magical mushroom village and threw them into modern day New York City to have shenanigans with Neil Patrick Harris and a ton of product placement, it was bad and so was its sequel though I give Hank Azaria some credit for at least trying to get something out of his performance as the evil wizard, Gargamel. 

            However, Sony’s fully animated Smurfs movie, Smurfs: The Lost Village from 2017 I actually thought wasn’t that bad and felt a lot closer to what a Smurfs movie should be like compared to the previous two films. It isn’t anything spectacular and I wouldn’t seek it out ever again, but compared to the live-action Smurfs movies, The Lost Village was a huge improvement over them. 

            Now we have this new film from director Chris Miller (Shrek the Third, Puss in Boots) and Paramount Pictures who originally had the feature film rights to The Smurfs until Sony acquired them and we got The Smurfs (2011). Truth be told, their original idea for a Smurfs movie sounded promising with an animated fantasy movie approach reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings and The Princess Bride, but then the rights landed at Sony who instead tried to make their own Alvin and the Chipmunks movie out of it because that was successful. 

            That didn’t seem like the movie we were going to get when the trailers first came out, it just looked like another bad Smurfs movie except it’s from a different studio with focus on the multiverse (Because if it worked for Spider-Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe then clearly it’ll work for Smurfs). Despite not being won over by the previous Smurfs movies and unimpressed by the marketing, I tried to keep an open mind with this new Smurfs film and…it’s bad, but…! 

            I do think this Smurfs movie is better than the ones from 2011 and 2013 as the film does get creative with the crazy worlds the Smurfs explore, the animation style is appealing, and most of the voice acting is decent. But it still falls flat in terms of the writing, logic, and overreliance on tired kids movie tropes, in other words Paramount is basically copying what Sony did. 

            The film follows Smurfette (voiced by Rihanna-Battleship, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets,Ocean’s 8) and No Name Smurf (voiced by James Corden-Into the Woods, Peter Rabbit 1 and 2, Trolls 1 and 2) leading the Smurfs on an adventure to rescue Papa Smurf (voiced by John Goodman-The Big Lebowski, The Emperor’s New Groove, Monsters, Inc. 1 and 2) after being captured by the evil wizard brothers, Razamel and Gargamel (Both voiced by J.P. Karliak-X-Men ‘97, New Looney Tunes, Skylanders). This leads them outside their mushroom-housed Smurf Village and into the real world where they encounter an International Neighborhood Watch Smurfs group, Papa Smurf’s long lost brother, Ken (voiced by Nick Offerman-The Lego Movie 1 and 2, Dumb Money, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning), and a whole dimension of Smurfing insanity on their quest to save Papa Smurf. 

            The film also features the voices of Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek) as Joel, Amy Sedaris (Elf, Strangers with Candy, BoJack Horseman) as Jaunty, Nathasha Lyonne (American Pie franchise, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Bad Guys 2) as Mama Poot, Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy, Killing Eve, Raya and the Last Dragon) as Moxie Smurf, Alex Winter (The Lost Boys, Bill and Ted trilogy, In Search of Darkness) as Hefty Smurf, Maya Erskine (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Scoob!, Wildwood) as Vanity Smurf, Xolo Maridueña (Parenthood, Cobra Kai, Blue Beetle) as Brainy Smurf, Miller as Grouchy Smurf, and Billie Lourd (American Horror Story, Star Wars franchise, The Last Showgirl) as Worry Smurf. 

            Overall, Smurfs (2025) is to put it simply, another dumb Smurfs movie that I can only recommend to very young kids and even then, that’s a stretch when there are other family films out in theaters or on streaming that are much better. I can’t say this film made me angry while watching it as it gave me what it advertised and mostly found myself bored by it aside from when the film decides to get crazy. 

            I’m going to say a few nice things about it; I like the animation style of this movie and does capture the look and feel of the cartoon except brought in a 3D world, they even do some cute visual gags with comic word bubbles. It honestly made me wish I was just watching a Smurfs movie set in Smurf Village with this colorful animation without the real world. 

            The voice acting is decent and I don’t mean Rihanna and James Corden, John Goodman was a fine choice for Papa Smurf as he naturally has that gruff, dad-like voice and plays it well here. JP Karliak is entertaining as both Razamel and Gargamel despite the material not really doing him any favors, he can at least deliver it in a humorous way and is giving his all. 

            This film plays around with the multiverse a lot which shows the Smurfs entering different universes with various animation styles like stop-motion, 8-bit video game, and anime. That was when I was starting to admire the film’s energy, but it was in the climax and I wanted more of that instead of this uninspired kids film nonsense. 

            Aside from those things, this movie did absolutely nothing for me and just hits those beats I was expecting from a film like this, dumb jokes with Smurfs in place of words, modern talk, and I do not need to say what this film ends with because you already know. I wouldn’t mind some of these rehashed things if the movie was clever or compelling and it isn’t either. 

            This movie manages to somehow have less of a reason to go to the real world than the Neil Patrick Harris Smurfs movies, the characters barely interact with the live-action environments and to make it even more confusing, the logic of animated characters living in the real world for no reason. Yeah, Razamel and Gargamel’s castle is in the real world and inside there are a bunch of cartoon characters and animated interiors, was it trying to be like Who Framed Roger Rabbit where toons and humans co-exist or were the writers on Blue Meth again? I’m guessing the latter! 

            Yeah, Smurf this Smurfing movie and go see any other movie! Smurfs (2025) has energy and appealing aspects, but at the cost of entertainment value and cleverness as another grim example of adapting a classic cartoon to feature film.