Liable to leave you feeling kind of blue
Previously on The Smurfs, it got weird: Brendan Gleeson was stripped naked and fell into a dumpster. Nothing quite so weird happens in Smurfs: The Lost Village, the third of their worryingly persistent big-screen outings, perhaps because all the actors have skedaddled after a long think about their lives.
Gleeson’s gone. Neil Patrick Harris has debonairly excused himself.
Even Hank Azaria, who played the snaggle-toothed villain Gargamel in 1 & 2, is absent, and the character now appears in animated form, voiced by Rainn Wilson.
Other than him and his familiars, we are left wholly with Smurfs, Smurfville, or whatever it’s called, and some bulbous and unappealing animated backdrops, as if their covert takeover of Real Earth has run into contractual difficulties. Real Paris featured last time. Now nowhere will consent to have a Smurfs film shot in it, and no one will consent to star.
On the other hand, there is absolutely nothing about Smurfs: The Lost Village any paying customer could really call a problem. If you know what Smurfs are, you’ve only got yourself to blame.
If you’re interested, this contains double the number of Smurfs ever previously seen, thanks to the discovery of an all-female enclave somewhere deep in the woods. Smurfette, lone lady-Smurf among the original tribe, has company, at last! But the female Smurfs behave exactly like male ones with wigs.
Smurfette, a folkloric femme fatale, has a lot to answer for, specifically for kicking over the poor, defenceless Columbia Pictures Statue-of-Liberty lady before the film has even started.
One minute, you may find your eyelids drooping; the next, Smurfs are being chased down a warren by luminous green rabbits. Soon they’re all frolicking outdoors in a sort of Watership ho-down.
Under-eights may thrill to this. As for everyone else, just don’t say you weren’t warned.