Lame jokes and puerile cuteness doom this silly sequel, which takes the Smurfs to Paris. (
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In the ’80s, I hated Ronald Reagan, Bob Dylan and the Smurfs. It’s comforting to know I got one thing right.
It’s not often that a film deposits you back into childhood (OK, surly teen years), but “The Smurfs 2” refreshed all my uncomprehending youthful outrage that any network would air such sweet, simpering rubbish in a world that contained my satiric idol, Bugs Bunny.
Carrying on with the legacy of inanity, “The Smurfs 2” stumbles from one dumb pratfall to the next as evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria), who has a gig as a magician in Paris, plots to use Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) to steal from the little dolls their goodness-supplying “Smurf essence” and turn them into colorless trolls called Naughties, a k a Frankensmurfs.
Except the Naughties aren’t that naughty, Gargamel is bumbling instead of scary — one toddler burst into screams at the screening I attended, though probably because he’d have preferred a nice nap — and the movie mainly consists of one set piece after another of harmless, wit-free mischief such as trashing a sweet shop, soaring around the gargoyles of Notre Dame or falling off the Eiffel Tower. How to substitute in “Smurf” for one syllable of any word is the major challenge facing the five screenwriters. There’s “total Smurfageddon!” and “complete Smurftastrophe!” and “Smurfnapped by the ghastly Gargamel!”
Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays are back as Patrick and Grace, a couple of New Yorkers whose apartment the Smurfs stumbled into in the first film (they named their son Blue in homage). This time, Patrick has some mild daddy issues with his ebullient stepfather, Victor (Brendan Gleeson), who shows up unexpectedly and insists everyone join the Smurfs in battling Gargamel in Paris.
DMV-level boredom reigns throughout as Smurfette, sucked through a portal into a fountain in Paris, frolics around town with her supposed enemies the Naughties, Azaria mugs and Harris mostly looks as engaged as if he’s waiting for a bus.
Occasionally, there’s a contemporary or grown-up reference to freshen up this moldy blue cheese — one of the little critters is referred to as “Passive-Aggressive Smurf,” and Gargamel randomly offers a nutty review of an iPad-like tablet: “I’m enamored of this swiping motion!”
But equally often the attempts at nightclub repartee are embarrassing: When a talking duck proclaims he’s “free at last,” Harris says, “What are you, Martin Luther Wing?” It’s depressing to think that 5-year-olds are going to remember this movie as their first acquaintance with the phrase “Free at last.”
With names like Grouchy and Clumsy, the Smurfs are essentially Shrinky Dink-ed Seven Dwarfs run through a Windex bath and injected with the lame blandness of their native Belgium, where they were unleashed on the world in 1958. They’re as lethally uninteresting as Barney the Purple Dinosaur, though a Godzilla-style “Barney vs. Smurfs” is a movie I would pay to see, provided maximum destruction were promised. No matter which side loses that one, I win.