Here are some things that happen in Smurfs, the 2025 animated movie about those little blue guys called Smurfs.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Smurfs is garbage. It’s a randomized assortment of Stuff That Happens in Kids’ Animated Movies, which scriptwriter Pam Brady (Hot Rod) and director Chris Miller (Shrek the Third, Puss in Boots) seem to have organized into a narrative by means of free-association. It’s mostly meaningless, or occasionally mildly offensive, if you stop to think about it. It’s also blandly drawn, stiffly animated, and maddeningly inconsistent in its visual design.
Look, I get it; it’s tough to make something out of the Smurfs. I grew up in the U.K., but I have family in France and Switzerland, and visiting them in the summers, I would always be drawn to my cousins’ racks of bandes dessinées — French-language comic books, often originating in Belgium, usually published in lovely big-format hardcovers. Tintin and Asterix are the ubiquitous ones that were translated around the world, but I would also find the likes of Spirou et Fantasio (a Tintin knockoff about a bellboy who goes on adventures), Gaston (a brilliant slapstick metacomedy set in the offices of Spirou’s publisher), and the Smurfs, or Les Schtroumpfs — miniature blue gnomes that began as supporting characters in a medieval fantasy series called Johan et Pirlouit.
The Smurfs’ iconic look, created by the Belgian comics artist Peyo, helped make them internationally famous, with the help of some very efficient licensing and merchandizing. But the original comics were never that widely published, and at this point, the Smurfs are just famous for being famous. They’re globally recognizable, which is why films still get made about them, but they don’t stand for anything or have much of a coherent overall narrative. They’re a black hole of meaning that’s difficult to fill.
Smurfs tries to fill it, but fails. It isn’t boring — it moves along at a clip, and keeps shape-changing in a way that keeps the audience off balance. But it’s a lazy assortment of kids’ movie tropes that exists only to keep a perpetual branding machine in motion.
My 6-year-old daughter loved it.
Smurfs arrives in theaters on Friday, July 18.
