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Smurfs 2
(U)
© Columbia Pictures - all rights reserved
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| Tookey's Rating |
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1 /10
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| Average Rating |
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3.53 /10
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| Starring |
| Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, Brendan Gleeson |
| Full Cast > |
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Directed by: Raja Gosnell
Written by: J. David Stem, David Weiss, Jay Scherick, David Ronn, Karey Kirkpatrick  , based on a story by Jay Scherick, David Ronn, J. David Stem and David Weiss
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| Tookey's Review |
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| Pro Reviews |
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| Mixed Reviews |
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| Anti Reviews |
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| Cast |
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| Released: |
2013 |
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| Genre: |
ANIMATION
SEQUEL
FAMILY
COMEDY
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| Origin: |
US |
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| Colour: |
C |
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| Length: |
105 |
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Smurfing hell.
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Reviewed by Chris Tookey
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If you dislike your children or wish to threaten them with something more traumatic than the naughty step, The Smurfs 2 can be heartily recommended. It’s an abhorrent shambles infested by small, humourless creatures who look as though they have been drenched in lavatory cleaner.
Each has a character trait helpfully reflected in their name. So there’s Vanity Smurf, Clumsy Smurf and Grouchy Smurf. It’s a pity there’s no Honesty Smurf to tell them how deeply annoying they all are.
They use the word “smurf” a lot, though the term appears to have no meaning, a bit like “organic” or “sustainable” in supermarkets. Within the movie, “smurf” is used to invoke the Deity, flatulence and a four-letter swearword beginning with F. Perhaps four year-olds find this witty. Most people will find it smurfing obnoxious.
Raja Gosnell’s sequel to his own first film has the same eagerness to please the lowest common denominator that he brought to Big Momma’s House.
The five writers have, between them, created such blots on the cultural landscape as Are We There Yet?, Daddy Day Camp and Norbit. All the film really needed was one writer. A good one.
In this no-effort sequel to a movie that depressingly took in over 560 million dollars worldwide, the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) is attempting to kidnap his smurf creation Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) in order to drain her of smurf essence and create a new and naughtier race of small blue creatures wearing stupid hats. Why? Don’t ask me. He’s just evil, I guess.
The only people who stand in the way of his fiendishness are proud father Neil Patrick Harris, proud mother Jayma Mays, their perennially grinning small son (Jacob Tremblay) and his Oirish step-grandfather Brendan Gleeson. They’re aided and abetted by several smurfs, whose names I have forgotten. Let’s just call them Dreary, Dull, Stupid and Unfunny.
In order to make the nonsensical plot even weirder to the adult mind, there’s a laborious insistence that stepfathers are good, and natural fathers dangerous, reckless and mean, which I imagine will go down well with stepfathers, but not so much with that besieged minority of guys who are still married to the women they fathered children with.
If you’re looking for a deeper reason for this movie’s existence, I can point you in the direction of some heavy-duty product placement for Sony products and a talking duck that sings the praises of a Toyota Prius. Over 300 million smurf figurines have been sold worldwide, so merchandising people must love them.
Possibly in order to keep themselves awake, the film-makers insert references to Audrey Hepburn films and Scarface, movies that will convey no meaning to this garbage’s diminutive target audience. Anyone older or more discriminating will have tuned out long before and be thinking nostalgically of the Disney or Pixar films they could be watching instead of this lazy, unambitious pap.
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