Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/26/review-smurfs-the-lost-vill.html
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Agreed, but frankly neither was the original cartoon. Every re-watch it as an adult? It’s impossible to enjoy even on an ironic level. Those squeaky voices, man.
The best thing this movie has going for it is that it felt like an actual Smurfs movie instead of an obscene parody of a Smurfs movie like those two previous films that put the CGI characters in a live-action world. I didn’t especially enjoy this movie but at least I didn’t feel dirty for taking my kids to see it.
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I remember reading a funny anecdote about how they tricked Peyo into letting them dial back the sexism for the TV show, but I never watched the show much, just read the books. Which I’m sure in their own way are probably pretty bad too.
The animation tech should be used to make a new TV show! Hopefully with the creators given more latitude to not have to include a dumb pop culture quip every three lines.
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I’m more of a “Care Bears” kinda guy.
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You’re upset because the new Smurfs movie is shallow and politically regressive? Liberal overthinking elected Trump, you know.
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Aw, it’s too bad. This was the first Smurf flick I’d thought to bring the Geeklet too (she’s almost 4). The ones with NPH looked embarrassingly bad.
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Did you read the review? I mean, in the first paragraph I say it’s progressive.
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Every once in a while, I notice a Smurf movie poster, and think to myself, “Oh, they’re making a movie?” And I instantly forget about it, until I see another such poster. For all I know, it’s the same film, being endlessly re-released. No one I know has ever mentioned the smurfs except for the old tv show. Or a Tom Smith song.
I take that back. Some ingress players call themselves smurfs. So maybe I’ll go see a Smurf movie if they play resistance fighters in Ingress: The Movie
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It is far better than those, for sure. It’s probably as good as, say, any 1980s animated kids movie. It’s just the age of Pixar and Trolls and so on, the bar is so much higher.
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I skimmed, I admit. All I saw was the misogyny and lady golems.
Experiencing this movie is like being beaten unconscious with a plush Joseph Campbell doll stuffed with hard candy.
I love these lines that bad or mediocre movies tend to inspire.
[quote=“beschizza, post:9, topic:99877”]It’s just the age of Pixar and trollies and so on, the bar is so much higher.[/quote]What I recall from the reviews of trollies is that it was almost as much of a brazenly generic, substance-free commercial product.
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Yeah, so it’s kind of odd in that respect, taking something so profoundly sexist and trying to fix it. Making The Smurfs not be sexist might be a little like trying to make Jungle Book not be racist.
But unlike most critics of that sort of thing, I do think it’s possible. The problem is that liberal filmmakers (broadly speaking) fear that subversion will get them in trouble, so they try and accomplish the same end through innuendo, which doesn’t work because innuendo is a form of veiled consent to censorship.
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Your conclusion was awesome. Mid-sentence cut-off and realization that you’re analyzing a kids movie to that degree was very well done. 
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I’ve heard good things about Trolls, but haven’t seen it!
There’s got to be at least one post that can be squeezed out of the phenomenon of penguins|minions|glowbunnies, etc…and what they tell us about who they represent, who we actually want to see stories about, and who we really want to be rooting for.
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the evil (((wizard))) Gargamel
Oh shit, how did I never see that before? Damn, way to poison my mind, cartoon I watched when I was 7.
Anyway, wake me when the Snorks movie drops. The small-minded called it a knockoff, but to the connoisseur of shitty mid-80s cartoons, its superiority is obvious.
EDIT: I wrote that last sentence without realizing Beschizza had used exactly that term to describe The Snorks. Now I feel like Allstar Seaworthy in the episode where he unknowingly disparaged a seaweed soufflé made by his friend Casey Kelp. There were all kinds of wacky misadventures as a result, but in the end, he had to be honest with her, so that she could learn to be a better chef.
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You would think in a village with only one woman, “the market”[1] would push the various Smurfs to behave as gentlemanly as possible to win the love of the single LadySmurf…
[1] sarcastic finger quotes
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I like this comment very much
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I’d take a crack at it myself, but I’m up to my knees in a treatise that debates whether Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood or the Curious George tv show is more of a bastardized betrayal of the source material. On the one hand, the theme song to Daniel Tiger sounds like a particularly breathing-impared pederast is trying to seduce children through the tv set, but on the other not a single story element in Curious George is driven by George’s curiosity…
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Should we change him to Poorly-Supervised George?
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