Review of The Smurfs 2 (2013) by Liam C — 22 Jun 2014

Smurfs 2 is just like it's predecessor, it's nothing mind blowing but you could do a lot worse and besides some abhorrent product placement there isn't much to complain about. Atleast it makes sense in terms of what they established in the first movie and don't just have some contrived reason to go back to Earth.

I like the unlikely hero Smurfs this time around and I like to hear more of John Oliver as Vanity Smurf. The movie treads all the predictable plot points, like the scene where everyone thinks one of the good guys has joined the other side and it's nothing mind blowing, but it's hardly offensive to children like the Oogieloves or something.

Yknow? It's the smurfs! What do you expect from it? Some goofy summer movie to entertain children for 90 minutes and while that doesn't sound particularly worthy of any credit because there are other children's films out there that are more mature than making gag jokes like this one does but at least it doesn't feel out of place for a Smurf movie.

If they sat down to have a meaningful talk about politics, yeah that'd feel out of place, yeah it's dumb, but what can you do about it? It's very basic, childish humor and that's what it relishes itself in, don't hate it or otherwise it'll get stronger! To be fair though there is a plotline involving distant relationships between family members and while it is praiseworthy that they would include such a storyline, it feels completely out of place given how silly everything else is and these scenes go on for a bit too, so I'm sure some children loose interest until these scenes are over.

The product placement is terrible, even if the item that is being marketed in the movie isn't being used by a character it will just be sitting in the corner of a scene and in shot, which wouldn't be all that bad if it was somewhat subtle or left at just that but there's just so many Sony tablet shots that I almost wanted to puke and besides that, there are way too many shots catered for 3D and I didn't see this in the movie theatre in 3D but it's just so painfully obvious when it happens because all the characters hurl at the screen for a slowmo shot.

It's not a movie for me, or one I'd go out of my way to see but I can understand the appeal and it was on TV on a lazy Sunday afternoon, so why not? I'll give it the same score as I did my last review, even though that review was horribly written.

It's nothing spectacular but hey, it's Smurfs, go in with the right mind set and no expectations and you'll probably not hate it and hey! The audience score is actually higher than before, not like thats exactly saying much, but its something.