Well, the animated features of 2017 roll on,
with the first of three from Sony Animation arriving in theatres leading up to the Easter Holidays.
I’ll be honest, folks.
Until recently, Smurfs: The Lost Village had barely even registered on my radar.
I missed the period of the 80’s cartoon by several years,
and the live-action flicks from a couple of years back looked awful enough that I still have not seen them.
But, as the trailers started dropping, I strangely felt less dread then I’d anticipated.
How much this has to do with a sub-par animated slate for 2017,
or that since I’m reviewing all these flicks I’m going to pay attention to them all, I cannot say.
But, I took it as a good sign.
An especially solid opening five minutes gets us into this world really quickly.
Smurf Village is filled with cute blue gnomes known as Smurfs, all defined by a single personality trait
that gives them their names, though the only ones we need concern ourselves
with are bookworm Brainy, smug but sweet Hefty, timid Clumsy and Smurfette.
Papa Smurf is only as strict as he has to be, for the evil Gargamel is constantly trying to destroy the Smurfs.
Turns take a matter for the worse
when the wizard discovers the location for a Lost Village of other Smurfs.
Barely managing to conceal her rising anxiety at being different then all the other Smurfs,
Smurfette leads the other three to find this lost village.
I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather
have the Smurfs in an adventure film then a full-on sassy comedy.
For though the adverts have downplayed it, this is first and foremost an adventure film.
And what that means is that many of the most
obnoxious elements you might otherwise expect aren’t as omnipresent.
The flipside to that is that there’s not a whole lot else that can be qualified as good.
It’s more that the film does things decently that are often done badly.
And it is the case that all the gender reductions the Smurfs have carried throughout the decades return.
As is often the case when an animated film pulls the “female empowerment” plug,
this results in the males being portrayed mostly as dips,
and the females as being full of testosterone and more manly then the males.
The only balance is Smurfette,
and she doesn’t end up having any more depth then most animated protagonists.
If this doesn’t bother me all that much, well, it’s easier to take that in a fantasy with non-humanoids.
That, and I’m not a girl.
Just in case you were wondering.
All that being the case, the characters suffice,
with Smurfette’s three companions, despite being defined by a single attribute,
showing the ability to step outside of said attributes marginally.
The most engaging is Gargamel, if you like old-fashioned, campy, evil, magic brewing villains.
That extends to his minions too, with his vulture and cat especially delivering playful reactions
when they’re not trying to please him.
Otherwise, flaws pop up here and there,
like a wobbly structure, pop song interludes, and the obligatory dance number ending.
But the film manages to make these traits all less problematic to the extent
that none of them actively annoyed me. Not the same as engaging me, but it’s something.
To my delight, this film only had a few cases,
at best, of that awful habit of using the word “smurf” to replace any given phoneme.
The only wasted opportunity is the cast.
Aside from Rainn Wilson portraying Gargamel as over-the-top as he can,
and perhaps Jack McBrayer playing Clumsy in his usual squeak,
every other star does nothing of note.
Turns out Demi Lovato’s speaking voice gets indistinctive pretty fast,
and there’s nothing done by anyone else that a professional voice actor couldn’t do in their sleep,
given the right voice director.
This is especially noticeable once they reach the lost village.
Since we don’t get there until over halfway into the film,
its inhabitants have even less room to break beyond vague one-trait personalities then the leads.
And then we come to the visuals, and this is where I stop sniping,
for Smurfs: The Lost Village is an exquisite treat for the retinas.
Much like Illumination and Blue Sky Studios, Sony Animation keeps their budgets to $100 million or less.
However, that has generally left Blue Sky playing in Dreamworks and Pixar’s shadow,
whereas Illumination’s output is, bar outliers, just dispiriting.
But Sony has turned this into a strength,
by making features that truly embrace the visual traditions of cartoons,
rather then copying every other major studio in using the Disney tradition.
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs went full Looney Tunes on us,
with outrageous physics and design and wacky rubber hose animation.
Then, Genndy Tartakovsky took all he gained from his days at Cartoon Network,
and made Hotel Transylvania a lovely exercise in every cartoon principle known to man.
The sequel doubled down on this direction enough
to make a cartoon formalist like myself weep despite the trite screenplay.
The physics in Lost Village aren't quite that inspired, though it's still wacky enough to compensate.
No, the true miracle here is in the design.
The aesthetic of the characters, designs and environments closely matches the original comics,
which is certainly welcome, for visual faithfulness is something to be appreciated.
But the artists are smart enough to leave room to put their own stamp on it.
With basically the whole film taking place in nature, the film remains constantly gorgeous.
The flora and fauna throughout is always lovely, with such otherworldly design choices in the anatomy
that rivals the vegetation on the best-designed alien worlds in cinema.
And this applies to any visual element not inherited from the source material,
especially once we reach the lost village itself.
It’s no accident that the film’s best segments by far are those that most openly ape Avatar.
It is obvious that they didn’t have a Pixar budget,
but these are the kind of results that not only don’t need a budget that high,
but also by and large wouldn’t gain much from a larger budget either.
In its own small way, this is already certain to be one of the best-looking films this year,
animated or otherwise, and easily the best-looking film from Sony Animation.
All this, despite playing in the same visual wheelhouse as a decades-old comic.
I’m sure that’s enough on the film’s look for anyone in the crowd who's not an animation buff,
so to wrap up, the film is clearly a Smurf product, with all the cultural baggage intact.
But even though most of the bad tendencies of modern animation remain to a degree,
a lot of them are subdued, with fart jokes and awful pop culture references kept surprisingly low.
And I haven't been thinking about the thin personalities or gender reduction since I saw Lost Village.
I’ve been thinking about the immersive world it’s cooked up,
and how there was little I found actively problematic.
Which might sound like faint praise. But make no mistake, it is praise, folks.
So while I’d drag my feet about recommending it,
I wouldn’t make any effort to stop someone from checking it out either.
Not remotely necessary, but it’s a way to spend 81 minutes, sans credits.
Thankfully, it’s not protracted like many recent animated flicks.
And if you have kids, it’s perfect for them, which is more then can be said for some recent cartoons.
There’s nothing objectionable or inappropriate,
and you yourself will have a passable time if you bring an open mind.
I can’t imagine I’ll have more then faint memories of it a year from now,
but sometimes, that’s all you need.
And if you do feel inclined to discover this Lost Village,
don’t wait until it hits home media, do so in theaters.
The visuals justify your curiosity on the big screen.
Thanks for watching the review, folks. As always, I'm your host, Mike Culligan, of Cartoon Karma.
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