SMURFS - Mark Reviews Movies

Smurfs, Paramount Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 18, 2025

Once the Smurfs have to deal with a multiverse, it's probably time to hang up that storytelling device for a while. The little blue guys do go on an interdimensional adventure in Smurfs, which suggests that the nearly 70-year-old characters might also need a rethinking at this point.

After all, the charm of these characters, created by Belgian comic artist Peyo in the late 1950s, is in their simplicity. With the Smurfs, you know exactly what you're getting. Their individual names say everything one needs to know about each one—from the brainy Brainy Smurf, to the clumsy Clumsy Smurf, to the hefty Hefty Smurf, to the father-like leader Papa Smurf. It'd be impossible to tell these characters apart otherwise, except that Papa dons a red hat instead of a white one and Smurfette, the only female Smurf, has long hair and wears a dress.

Simplicity would seem to be a foundational part of the nature of these characters, as well as whatever story in which they're going to be involved. Director Chris Miller's new animated-movie iteration of the characters gets off to a rough start in that department, when it's revealed that the Smurfs are guardians of all that is good in the universe, contained within a quartet of magical books that the Smurfs have been protecting for a long time. Whatever mythology was with the Smurfs from the beginning and has developed over their various appearances outside of the original comics has essentially become superhero-ized in this one.

Thankfully, the movie doesn't treat them as actual superheroes, although the characters so quickly enter a whirlwind plot of interdimensional travel, intergalactic villains, and interspecies alliance (as well as romance) that the movie doesn't really come up with a way to treat them at all. After the prologue, the material begins as a musical, featuring back-to-back songs, and then, the screenplay by Pam Brady forgoes that approach for all the multiversal shenanigans that follows. As awkward as it may be to watch the Smurfs try to be hip with a remixed version of their la-la theme song, that at least feels more in line with the basic, innocent spirit of these characters.

The plot mostly follows the pairing of Smurfette (voice of Rihanna, who also gets to sing the belated third tune in this three-song affair) and a new Smurf who's still trying to figure out his definitive characteristic. He's called No Name (voice of James Corden) for the time being, and after Papa (voice of John Goodman) is abducted by the evil wizard Razamel (voice of JP Karliak), Smurfette and No Name, along with a small collection of the more recognizable Smurfs, set out on a quest to rescue their leader. They receive help from Papa's brother Ken (voice of Nick Offerman), who's living in a disco ball at a Paris nightclub and has a more cynical view of the world than his brother.

Since the characters mostly exist to carry forward the plot and the plot is formulaically familiar, it might be best to focus on the movie's weird aesthetic for a bit. It's computer animation, made to look a bit flatter a la the style of the original comics, but the appearance of the characters and the backgrounds is mostly uninspired beyond that. Stranger still, part of the Smurfs dimensional-hopping journey throws them into the middle of the real world, such as when they pop up in a Paris populated by proper people.

They also end up in Munich, where Razamel's evil castle towers over the autobahn in a semi-photorealistic design. The castle's interior, though, looks like a handmade drawing, so in addition to how lazy the movie's depiction of different dimensions turns out to be, the execution of it is stylistically inconsistent. There's a climactic sequence of Razamel and a couple of Smurfs traveling to other mediums (clay-based animation, a child's drawing, and a video game), but it's too little and too late—and still too cheap-looking—to make much of an impact.

There's really not much more to say about the story, which basically comes from a template of any animated adventure, or the humor, which desperately tries to appeal to any adults in the audience, or the characters, whose only notable quality apart from the Smurfs' basic descriptors is the extensive cast of vocal actors. Most of them are glorified cameos, really, so it must have been an easily, comfortably earned paycheck for the likes of Natasha Lyonne, Amy Sedaris, and Octavia Spencer, at least.

Characters this simple don't need much to thrive. However, Smurfs tries so hard to appeal to assorted trends that its defining characteristic is that, well, it's trying too hard.

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