Starring: Neil Patrick Harris, Katy Perry, Hank Azaria
In the village populated by the small and blue creatures known as the Smurfs, plans are set to celebrate the birthday of the only female smurf, Smurfette (Perry), who was created by the evil wizard Gargamel (Azaria) to trap the smurfs, only for Smurfette to become a 'true' smurf and their friend. However, it's a surprise party and whilst the party is being kept secret, Smurfette believes she's being rejected and runs away to Paris with two of Gargamel's other creations, Vexy (Christina Ricci) and Hackus (J.B. Smooth) in a plot to bring Smurfette back to Gargamel. Concerned for Smurfette, a group of smurfs take off for Paris to track her down.
A sequel to the 2011 film the, The Smurfs, based on a creation by Belgian cartoonist, Peyo, The Smurfs 2 takes the action to Paris calling to mind The Rugrats 2 (2001) another animated sequel to a film adaptation of a kids favourite, that transplanted the action to Paris. However, here the cultural cliches are rather down-played, focusing more on the story which relies in no small part on the aidience's familiarity with the first recent Smurfs film (as opposed to the several animated films of the Smurfs that have been drifting around for decades). There are some notable cast changes as some smurfs in the foreground in the 2011 film (such as Alan Cumming's Gutsy Smurf) are pushed into the background whilst other smurfs that were in the background in 2011 (particularly, Jon Oliver's Vanity Smurf) are now in the foreground. Neil Patrick Harris as our human lead also gets a new actor to work with, alongside a returning Jayma Mays (a woman so perky and extremely doe-eyed she looks a perfect fit to interact in a semi-cartoonised world.), with fiery Sophia Vegara being replaced by a surprisingly more jovial, Brendon Gleeson.
A big problem is that whilst the 2011 film did have some genuinely sweet and engrossing moments despite being profoundly flawed, The Smurfs 2 is far too haphazard to really provoke any reaction. It deals with some intriguingly lofty ideas (I'm disappointed that the film isn't titled, The Smurfs 2: Smurfette's Existential Crisis) but us crowded by rather lacklustre jokes and little emotional resonance, coupled with a great number of issues on a logical front (and you're dealing with tiny blue creatures crossing dimensions, so imagine how big those logical gaps are). Hank Azaria provides a pleasing villain, largely because he's always an entertaining presence in comic roles, even if you'll occasionally hear him play a little too close vocally towards Moe from The Simpsons, whilst his feline sidekick, Azrael, is the stand-out character. But it says a great deal when your best character is a semi-anthropomorphised cat. Push it in with occasionally gratuitous CGI imagery and you get a film that isn't offensively poor, but doesn't make the best of what assets it has.
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