thebahamasweekly.com - A Smurfette Tale That Aims For The Children And Not Much Else

One of the taglines for this movie: They Were Never Alone.

A mysterious map sets a group of magical creatures on a thrilling adventure through an area they had never explored. As they race against their nefarious adversary to unlock the meanings behind the depictions on the map, it becomes an exciting journey that could lead them to a monumental secret.

Smurfette is the female smurf who is trying to find her identity within the Smurf Village as she was the only one of them created from clay by the wizard Gargamel. Papa Smurf is the fatherly leader of Smurf Village who warns all the smurfs he looks after against ever wondering into the Forbidden Forrest. Smurf Willow of the motherly leader of Smurf Grove where her collection of female Smurfs live deep within the Forbidden Forest. Gargamel is an evil wizard living in a run down castle with his cat Azrael and vulture Monty who wants nothing more than to steal the essence of all the smurfs to become the most powerful wizard in the world.

Smurfs: The Lost Village was fun in the way it told an original story that introduced a new facet to the Smurf mythos. The animation style is fresh and updates the way we see the characters with a voice cast that is up to the task of maintaining a lively yet simple adventure story. Kelly Asbury is able to do a solid job of directing the script by Stacey Harman and Pamela Ribon that adds a new feature to the magical Smurf landscape. The biggest problem I had with this movie was the inclusion of pop songs that felt intrusive in almost every scene they are used where a score of classic music would have made the film feel timeless. This movie reminded me of Trolls but also Care Bear the Movei 2 The Next Generation with Smurf Village being Care-a-Lot and Smurf Grove being The Forest of Feelings. I wish this had been the movie they had started out with instead of the two live action cgi hybrids, but I must say that Hank Azaria is a better Gargamel than Rainn Wilson in the present film.

I rate this animated motion picture a rating of 3 out of 5.

P.S.

There is an odd fourth wall breaking mid credit sequence that is just proof that this movie was made to delight only children.

In Theaters

See other reviews by Rouén HERE.

Rouén Robinson has been an avid moviegoer since childhood and has been critiquing motion pictures for almost a decade. He has been a film critic for The Cinemas on Tempo and was a judge for FLIFF On Location: Grand Bahama Island, an off shoot of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival (FLIFF). Rouén lives in Grand Bahama and can be reached at redr1976@icloud.com and on Twitter @thereelrouen