Smurfs: The Lost Village

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Smurfs: The Lost Village is a computer animated film that serves as a reboot to the Smurfs franchise. Smurfette (voiced by Demi Lovato) stumbles upon a strange smurf she has never seen before, and accidentally exposes the existence of these unknown smurfs to the villainous Gargamel (voiced by Rainn Wilson). It doesn’t take long before Smurfette, Clumsy (voiced by Jack MacBrayer), Hefty (voiced by Joe Mangianello), and Brainy (voiced by Danny Pudi) go looking for the lost village, hoping to reach it before Gargamel. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that this is the best Smurfs movie. The thing that honestly did surprise me was that this movie was actually pretty good. The smurfs are much more suited for animation, and it looks really good. Rainn Wilson as Gargamel was pretty funny. His plan was essentially the same as it was in the live action films. Here’s the thing. This movie makes him clueless and inept. Therefore, it makes more sense why he would want to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Perhaps the biggest upgrade was Smurfette. While I don’t think Katy Perry necessarily did bad job voicing her in the live action movies, she felt a little too one note. This movie does a better job trying to explore the character’s feelings, and I actually thought Demi Lovato did a solid job with her voice. Just because I think this was good movie doesn’t mean it’s perfect unfortunately. The use of music in this movie never really fits right. While I don’t think Mandy Patinkin as Papa Smurf is bad, he doesn’t compare to Johnathon Winters. While most of the jokes actually do work, there are some of them that fall flat. The smurfs from the lost village are under-used. You don’t really get to know enough about them, or enough development to them. While this movie is far from perfect, it’s miles better than either of the two live-action movies.

6 / 10