Smurfs - Another bad entry in the series.

For over 10 years, Paramount has been trying to bring the Smurfs to the big screen—with varying degrees of success—which isn't at all surprising considering the trend of reviving last-century classics in live-action format. However, I can think of few examples that are as boring in practice as The Smurfs, and the recently released film directed by Chris Miller is a perfect example of this.

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And despite featuring a radically different animation style from the one we saw in previous films (which, incidentally, blended live action with CGI) loosely inspired by works like Spider-Verse or the excellent The Puss in Boots and The Last Wish, Smurfs 2025 achieves what we thought was impossible: presenting a film worse than its predecessors, even if its visual finish seems determined to convince us otherwise.

The presence of stars like Kurt Russell, Rihanna, and James Corden makes this feel like one of those animated nightmares that were so common in the past decade (the tedious Emoji Movie comes to mind), which is unfortunate considering there were a couple of interesting ideas that could have been executed much better.

Instead, we get another fish out of water story, where bringing the Smurfs into the real world is nothing more than an excuse to make a couple of absurd jokes mocking delivery apps.

As someone unfamiliar with the franchise, Smurfs 2025 fails to provide any incentive to immerse us in this universe, and it repeats narrative beats previously seen in the 2011 film and its 2013 sequel (such as the lack of identity of one of the Smurfs and the origins of Smurfette).

It's riddled with forgettable musical numbers and features a couple of forced needle drops that will raise an eyebrow, and despite being only an hour and a half long, it took me almost a week to complete.

I'm left with a couple of interesting things that were done in terms of animation, and it's still a harmless comedy for the whole family, although there are undoubtedly much better alternatives currently on the market.

Score taken from my Letterboxd account.