The Smurfs

Directed by Raja Gosnell, The Smurfs follows the title creatures as they attempt to evade Gargamel’s (Hank Azaria) advances while trapped in our world. It’s ultimately clear that The Smurfs’ periodically watchable vibe is due almost entirely to Azaria’s entertaining, scene-stealing turn as the villainous Gargamel, as the actor offers up an amusing and frequently hilarious performance that goes a long way towards compensating for the picture’s otherwise bland atmosphere – with the movie, for the most part, coming off as a geared-strictly-towards-small-children endeavor that contains few attributes designed to capture and sustain the attention of older viewers. And while Gosnell, armed with a script by J. David Stem, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick, and David Ronn, does a good job of infusing the proceedings with a briskly-paced and periodically exciting sensibility, with the latter particularly true of an extended sequence set within New York City’s FAO Schwarz’s toy store, The Smurfs builds towards a tiresome (and rather interminable) action-packed climax that confirms its place as a distressing misfire that would hardly be worth mentioning were it not for Azaria’s superb efforts.

** out of ****