Your paid support makes creative endeavors like these possible. Thank you.
I was in one of those unlucky subway cars with a broken A/C and getting pissed off at Superman. My angst was broad and unfocused and teenagerly (I’m 34), and I thought, Hey, might as well train my angst on Superman; it’ll bounce right off that guy! I was staring at this law firm’s subway ad. The lawyer was ripping open his shirt and blazer, you know, like Superman, to reveal his firm’s logo on his chest.
I was pretty sure the ad was AI, but not totally sure. I counted (and recounted) ten fingers total. AI was getting better at digits. Right? I didn’t know. But it pissed me off that AI was getting better at bullshitting me. It pissed me off that this slick, glossy, colorful image didn’t have obvious flaws. The lack of flaws brought me back to Superman, the flawless hero being played by a flawless David Corenswet who, while I’m sure he’s a swell guy, is nonetheless the Official Jawline of a merciless press offensive that nothing short of going Amish would exempt me from, and I just, I just…
That’s angst for you! Incoherent, juvenile. I got it in my head that AI and Superman were in league somehow, that they were both part of the same Big Rotten Conspiracy, and that no one noticed or cared because it (the Big Rotten Conspiracy) was giving those dullards exactly what they were asking for. The B.R.C., I decided, was at its most intolerable when it executed some aspect of its plan competently, as in the case of this subway ad, or a pretty-good to maybe-really-good Superman movie with a cast I was being commanded to, per reels on Instagram, be so obsessed! with, and that multiple people were telling me to see.
And for what? What could Superman possibly hold for me? Oh, shall I hazard a guess? All hope seems lost, but Superman, with the help of his super friends, saves the day? And makes a bunch of money for studio execs in the process? And there’s a little post-credits scene at the end telling us to keep our wallets out? Am I right? Do I win? Are there lasers?
Goodness, what an absolute fit I was pitching. It was in the middle of this sweaty tantrum that I simultaneously realized that A. after a pretty decent manic run it appeared I was depressed again, and B. I couldn’t really help that and C. if I didn’t commit some act of vandalism against the B.R.C., no matter how minor, I was going to actually go crazy. I obviously couldn’t deface the ad. I’m too polite. So I texted Henry.
“I want to see the Smurfs!”
“Yes,” he replied almost immediately, as if sensing his pal was standing tiptoed on the side of the proverbial bridge. “When?”
A few nights ago, Henry, Lilly (his girlfriend), and I made our way to the theater in Lower Manhattan where we’d enjoyed several terrible movies together. This time, though, I felt embarrassed as we took our seats. I guess I forgot that Smurfs was a movie for children. Like, children recently graduated from the Goo-Goo & Ga-Ga School for Babies. I did see, while purchasing tickets, that the theater would be practicing a relaxed noise policy to allow the kiddos to hoot and holler as they pleased.
This laxed noise policy would end up being unnecessary. The children in attendance at our screening of Smurfs watched in the sort of solemn silence one might expect out of overly-respectful tourists observing kabuki. This might have had something to do with Smurfs not being funny, having no story, and not having even the benefit of relying on preexisting popularity. I don’t think the average American child sees many Smurfs at the supermarket or at the toy store, and I find it difficult to imagine a kid crying at checkout because their mom refused to buy them a Smurf1 plush.
But I get ahead of myself. The suggestion of a story in Smurfs, a film with a marketing strategy that begins and ends with “Rihanna is Smurfette,” is that No Name Smurf, played by James Corden, is the only Smurf in his blue ethnostate who doesn’t have a “thing.” Brainy Smurf is smart. Grouchy Smurf is a grump. Hefty Smurf is strong. Handy Smurf can repair your house. Smurfette is a girl. These, in Smurf culture, are “things.” Not saying I condone it.
Poor No Name (the actual main character) thus finds himself living outside Smurf societal conventions, and desperately wanting in. Despite his lonely status as an outlier in the sun-drenched, mushroomy idyll of Smurf Village, none of the Smurfs are cruel to him. Quite the opposite. They tell him not to worry about it. They tell him it’s totally fine. If he really wants a thing, they’re happy to work through an endless list of “things” with him until he finds one he likes. But, really, there’s no pressure. It’s No Name Smurf himself who’s determined to make this an urgent dilemma.
What a compelling portrait of depression! As a longtime sufferer, there’s something that feels indulgent about depression, like a personal resolve to see things negatively. It’s not the case that a depressed person sees the world as colorless. Instead, the depressed individual sees a colorful world in which colors neglect and exclude him. These colors are at all times visible and available to everyone else, leaving the depressed individual with the frustrating, impossible task of explaining why, exactly, the omnipresent colors that are entirely accessible to all except him have nothing to say to him. When attempting to articulate the agony of his situation, one that’s almost equally mystifying to the discloser as it is to the disclosee, the depressed individual humanly reaches for the language of lack: “I lack friends, joy, laughter, stimulation, love, beauty, a ‘thing.’” In reality, he is often surrounded by these things, by people who are more than willing to help. It’s only due to the insidiously individualizing nature of his condition that he is partitioned from them and, as a baby not yet gifted with words will turn to artless expressions of agitation, will resort to adult versions of wahhh’s and needy, pouty declarations that amount to it’s not fair! or I don’t wanna!, which, when repeated, become off-putting to even the most patient and gentle of unpaid support figures. Thus depression goes about transmuting the individual’s perceived isolation into actual isolation, checkmating its host into a lonely place where he (not unreasonably) blames himself, and where depression can have him, at all times, alone.
Still, I didn’t understand why No Name Smurf wasn’t just British Smurf. Or, if Smurf Village wasn’t aware of the existence of the United Kingdom, why he wasn’t the Smurf Who Talks Like That.
As far as plots go, though, this one was workable. Compelling, even. Relatable? Yes! Imagine my excitement when the movie introduced a magic talking book as a character. Would it give No Name Smurf some fragment of language that would help him out of his rut? Some paragraph of arcane wisdom that No Name will have to translate and, between its lines, find himself? Was Smurfs (2025) speaking directly to me, to a depressed individual (also blue, in his way) whose lack of ability to communicate his plight was manifesting in feelings of isolation from the slick, glossy, colorful world around him?
No, it was not!
While wishing for a “thing,” No Name Smurf happens to whine within earshot of Jaunty Grimoire, the sentient tome, who bequeaths him with magic. He becomes Magic Smurf. While demonstrating his new powers, however, he alerts Razamel to the location of the hidden Smurf Village, where the tome has been hiding.2 Razamel, part of an evil cabal of wizards, has been hunting this book for centuries. If he gets it, he will earn the respect of his cohort, and they, already in possession of the three other sentient tomes, will finally be able to remove all goodness from the world forever.3
Razamel replaces his better-known brother, Gargamel, as the villain in this film. I can’t imagine you giving a shit about any of this, but basically Razamel kidnaps Papa Smurf, and so No Name Smurf, Smurfette, Vanity Smurf, Hefty Smurf, Brainy Smurf, and Ron (Papa Smurf’s brother) embark on a rescue mission to save him.
If that sounds like a pretty straight-forward plot that would be hard for a children’s film to Smurf up, well, think again. Smurfs is, above all else, incompetently made. As I said before, it doesn’t really tell a story. It’s a picture that moves. Reviewing it would be a bit like reviewing a GIF. Its GIFFY nature might explain why Smurfs struggles to transition from one scene to the next. I don’t mean in a manic, hyper-caffeinated Cocomelon way, but as in, like, one second the Smurfs are in the Australian Outback, and the next they’re in Munich, and how or why they moved from the Boring Outback to Boring Munich is difficult to recall. I actually recall very, very little from Smurfs. It’s kind of insane how little story there is in Smurfs.
Somewhere, probably two theaters down, Superman was cultivating pathos with his audience by getting chained up and tortured by a fruity Lex Luthor or something. I was watching Smurfette riding in a kangaroo pouch and singing about believing in yourself while all her friends were getting magic-zapped offscreen to Razamel’s castle. Smurfs is uncomfortable with tension of any sort. In a movie for children, one naturally expects the stakes to be goofier and less threatening, but still, it’s odd how many potentially interesting things we could have seen, but were mysteriously denied.
I’ll briefly mention the Snooterpoots. Snooterpoots look like keychains on the discount shelf at Claire’s. Snooterpoots make me sad because they imply an ambition in Smurfs to sell toys. This is kind of like a tone-deaf friend warbling out “Listen” from the Dream Girls soundtrack and saying they’re moving to Nashville to pursue music. What can one do? What can one say? “Just… don’t.”
Despite Rihanna being Smurfette, Smurfette does little in this movie beyond serving as a mouthpiece for pop-therapy platitudes4. Her original Smurfs song, teased months ago, kind of a trippy banger, plays during the credits as if out of obligation. This movie is mostly about No Name Smurf (again, played by James Corden5). No one else really matters.
Papa Smurf, held captive under a bell jar6, is threatened with being squished. His rescue team (all except Smurfette and No Name Smurf) are also captured, also placed beneath the bell jar. They, too, are threatened with being squished. A Smurf-squishing machine is created, and demonstrated. Per what I know about storytelling, this is the part where the Smurfs ought to demonstrate the power of teamwork to overcome this obstacle. This doesn’t happen.
Papa Smurf doesn’t tell everyone to calm down and come up with a plan. Brainy Smurf doesn’t get a lightbulb over his head, snap his fingers, and nerdily describe his idea, something along the lines of, “If we simply apply substantial force to the parabola of the cosine of the blah blah blah,” and Vanity Smurf doesn’t translate by saying, “Um, I think he’s saying Hefty Smurf has to punch real hard right there,” and Hefty Smurf doesn’t crack his knuckles and say, “Now you’re speaking my language!” nor does he wind his arm up several times before shattering the glass with a mighty wallop.
None of that happens. The Smurves are successfully maneuvered under the squishing machine, and then saved at the last second by Gargamel, who’s mad at his brother for his success and for not loving him back. Gargamel just can’t let Razamel win, even if his interfering doesn’t make any sense and comes at a personal cost. In this, I caught a rather unflattering reflection of myself. I’d come to see Smurfs over Superman because I thought competent storytelling would make me feel worse. I thought seeing a successful movie would just make me even more resentful of the world around me. I just didn’t want to see the B.C.R. win. Turns out, the alternative isn’t terribly satisfying either! The whole thing felt like an elaborate self-harm ritual I’d roped two buddies into.
The Smurfs are freed by Gargamel, and rush to confront Razamel so they can defeat him with the power of friendship. Friendship, though, ends up having nothing to do with it. The Smurfs get waxed, and then No Name Smurf turns into God Himself and starts throwing interdimensional portals around like shuriken. After shooting beams of light at each other, the evil wizard is defeated and sealed away.
Perfect comeuppance! Smurfs turned into Infinity War But Really, Really Bad at the end. I had that coming. I sat in the theater for a while after this, and while it was probably the depression talking I was actually worried that my friendships with Henry and Lilly had somehow been damaged while watching Smurfs. I was relieved when, after exiting the theater, Henry disclosed a similar sentiment. “I felt ashamed,” he said, “watching that next to you.” It must have been something in the text itself that inspired such thoughts.
After dinner, walking home, I looked something up on my phone. While watching Smurfs, I’d been intermittently thinking of the Smurf Diet, otherwise known as the Vision Diet. I’d come across it while researching niche diet books from the past. In the Smurf Diet, the dieter wears blue-tinted glasses while eating. The theory is that warm-colored food items encourage appetite, whereas a meal presented in monochromatic blue will look less appealing. Yet, when I looked it up, I found no such thing. Only the Vision Diet came up. I guess there wasn’t a Smurf Diet that promised to make colorful things feel worse by making them look uniformly blue.
How odd! It definitely felt real.
I’ll spare you at least the throat-clearing of giving you the Smurf lore, that the Smurfs are Belgian and blue and created in Year Whenever and first appeared in Whatever and such.
Plot holes and perversions of Smurf lore abound here. Lucky for us, nothing matters.
Depression asks you to notice this.
And as for Rihanna, who I’m a fan of, by the way, I wouldn’t describe what she’s up to in this movie as “voice acting,” necessarily.
Hnnnng…
Depression asks you to notice this.
Sylvia Plath Smurf
we've got another hit on our hands