Gaze upon (and cringe at) at the new trailer for The Smurfs.
For some reason, Hollywood is on a kick of adapting mediocre cartoons for the big screen, with predictably terrible results (I’m looking at you, Yogi Bear). A few months ago, the teaser trailer for The Smurfs was released to universal groans; now the official trailer is out. Unsurprisingly, it’s dreadful.
Here’s the official synopsis of the movie:
When the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) chases the Smurfs out of their village, they’re forced through a portal, out of their world and into ours, landing in the middle of New York’s Central Park. Just three apples high and stuck in the Big Apple, the Smurfs must find a way to get back to their village before Gargamel tracks them down.
The trailer doesn’t really do a good job of explaining this plot, it’s just a bunch of gags that are unfurled without much explanation. Here’s what I gleaned from the trailer before I’d read the story summary: The Smurfs somehow wind up in New York after some cosmic event happens and turns the moon blue. Or they get shipped from Belgium to Neil Patrick Harris (channeling a toned-down Barney Stinson) and proceed to assault him when he opens up the box they’re sitting in. Gargamel randomly shows up and enjoys some fine dining in Manhattan before some sort of magical showdown with the little blue creatures.
The weirdest thing about the trailer is that it’s clearly trying to be edgy enough to appeal to teens by including lines that are intended to be raunchy jokes but just come off as cringe-inducing (such as when Gutsy says “Nothing like a cool breeze through my enchanted forest” while an air vent blows up his kilt or Papa Smurf asks “where the smurf are we?”).
No release date’s been revealed yet, outside of “Summer 2011”, but Sony Pictures has been happy to announce that the film will be in 3D.
