The Smurfs 2 - Movie Review

Who's in it?

Hank Azaria, Neil Patrick Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Katy Perry  and  Jonathan Winters


What's it about?

The film follows the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria; or how you would probably know him as most of the character's voices in The Simpsons) and his evil Smurf Naughties as they kidnap Katy Perry's Smurfette and consequently attempt to glean the secret formula to making the grey Naughties into true blue Smurfs, meanwhile Papa Smurf accompanied by Grumpy, Vanity and Clumsy try to rescue her.


Any Good?

After about a half-week of saying 'I'll have no part of the promotion of this crime against film!!', The Smurfs 2 really did surprise me. It was well written, funny, had fantastic voice acting, and a mix of NPH and Brendan Gleeson which seemed just too good to be true but really did shine as their chemistry together made the step-father/son relationship truly believable.

Excuse me while I squeedgy my brains off the window..

The humor was mostly pun-based, and Maaaa Cherry LOVES puns, so listening to her groan in delight next to me only added to the laughs that already were coming from the so-bad-they're-great puns onscreen. The best character of all thought had to be Vanity Smurf, more than once Maaaa and myself turned to each other and said 'Yup, that's Adam' when he was musing in the mirror to his reflection.

Brendan Gleeson was hilarious, he was great as Corndog King and Patrick Winslow's (NPH) step-father Victor Doyle. He really put on the Irish charm and kept on repeating The Doyle Men in reference to himself and Winslow much to the latter's annoyance, and even when he got ducked up by Gargamel (Azaria) he just got funnier in relation to just his personality and puns.

As the film gets on NPH and Brendan Gleeson's acting gets more emotional and serious, and is supported well enough by Jayma Mays' wife of NPH's character's wife, Grace Winslow. It is here that NPH and Gleeson's chemistry really shines, their serious conversations are genuinely touching even if they are so cliched it should be awkward.

Tied with Jennifer Laurence for hottest woman in Hollywood (Don't even try to argue)

Overall I was impressed by the acting as a whole, NPH was a bit shaky to start for me but really did grow into his part, Brendan Gleeson made up for the horrors he inflicted on me in the form of studying Caca Milis for the Leaving, and Hank Azaria was like a child's version of Moe Sizlack which, even appearing to be dumbed down, was still funny; especially when arguing with his smartarse CGI cat who was hilarious in his own right. The voice acting was really fantastic, Katy Perry was really a surprise to me in how well she actually voiced Smurfette in relation to her awkward part in a Simpsons episode before. All the Smurfs were well voiced, as were their grey counterparts, but Papa Smurf really did put across his emotions and the animation matched them to a tee. 

Sorry, I just couldn't resist those eyes, could you?!

All in all Smurfs 2 is a solid film, it has good puns and humor, a great cast, fantastic voice acting but it just wasn't for me really. Nan Cherry adored this, and even stayed awake the whole time (which as I mentioned before is a rare occurrence) but that's second hand information so I'm a bit skeptical if it's true. Both Nan and Maaaaa will murder me for this rating but bear in mind that 5 is an awkward number to rate from because the low sounding 2.5 cherries is half, but I honestly wasn't as invested as I was. The film is entertaining and the 3D is excellent, but as Maaaa herself quite rightly put it in the car today 'you wouldn't go to see it if you didn't have children with you', and for me it was truly a film that is better to rent than pay full plus in the cinema for the 3D as it's not worth the extra cost. And if you rent it you can tell the clerk that you're renting it for your kids and they won't give you the weird looks and make it awkward like turning up to the cinema alone only to sit among families with young children.

Rating:

Sorry for the odd cherries this week, our PC has decided we didn't use Internet Explorer enough or some ridiculous reason and refused to connect to the internet so I had to improvise 2 and a half cherries and that's the best I could do folks, I'm doing all I can to fix the PC problem!! As usual, I love to hear  what you thought of the film or general musings from you on Facebook, Twitter and in the comments,

The (sigh..) Eldest Gorgebag