"The Smurfs" seemed predestined to be a bad movie. Film adaptations of long-defunct TV shows rarely work, especially when the TV show in question is aimed at children. The fact that the show was never good in the first place doesn't help either. So yes, it should be no surprise to hear that "The Smurfs" does not buck this trend. Save for a chuckle here and there, it's just about as awful as I would have imagined.
The story, as it were, involves a handful of smurfs falling through a worm-hole that transplants them to New York City, along with the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) who will stop at nothing to capture the smurfs in order to harness their magic. The smurfs find refuge with Neil Patrick Harris and his pregnant wife Jayma Mays, who are disturbed at first but quickly fall victim to their cuteness. The gang needs to survive their stay in the big city until the next blue moon can create another portal back to their home world. It's your basic fish-out-of-water plot, except no material is ever even mined out of the fact that the smurfs suddenly find themselves in the real world. The vast, VAST majority of the humor revolves around Gargamel getting hit by things, reaction-shots of Gargamel's cat Azrael, or Clumsy the smurf causing things to fall down. Oh, and saying the word "smurf" a lot. Little children will no doubt find this amusing; for anyone else it will be an endurance test.
See whatsbrettwatching.blogspot.com for full review
