The Smurf's Triumphant return!

[Drtooth]

I also got the feeling it was made for 3 year olds with ADD.

It was.

Maybe becuase Smurfs are smaller..animals they wanted to give the effect to them that they were running on a faster line of thought and movement, like chipmunks? XD

They were.

The film industry is going through a rut, just as it did in the 1950s. In both cases, a new technology was sucking up all the attention (first Television and now the Internet). And as a result, Hollywood films started relying more on gimicry and less on quality. In the 1950s it was 3D, color film, Cinemascope, even Smell-O-Vision, all at the expense of decent storytelling. Nowadays it's CGI and (surprise!) 3D that's getting too much emphasis.

That's no excuse for making a garish, atrocious film that will appeal to nobody. I hope a studio exec has to be fired because of this. There is NO CALL for this movie to be an illegitimate Chipmunks movie. And not even the "good" one... the terrible second one. Fans of the show with kids will avoid it, kids don't give a rat turd about something that wasn't on TV for 20 years. Who the shell was this piece of garbage supposed to appeal to? They should have just dug a deep hole and threw money in it and set it on fire. At least then, you get the sight of the fire.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Is this a decline in the entertainment industry? I don't know, but they're no where near as imaginative like they were in the 80's.

I do think every industry has its ups and downs, that's normal. The question is when and how it can get better. My personal opinion, the movie industry did not fully regain its creative edge until the 1970's, after the culture in general started encouraging more artistic, unconventional outlets. Plus by then TV was more common place and no longer sucking up all the attention. Now the Internet keeps growing and developing which is good, but on the other hand people are getting more and more fed up with the lack of privacy, lack of civility, not to mention lack of security. So I do imagine an Internet backlash somewhere down the road. And I can see the other mediums taking advantage of that.

The more difficult issue is that Rip off Remakes and Reality Shows are simply easier and/or cheaper to produce, so the studios will keep making them. And annoyingly, some segments of the audience will keep buying into them.

Those songs might be old, but they're new to me

There's no such thing as an old song...if you haven't heard it before. (To paraphrase a wise saying. ).

 

[Drtooth]

The thing about the "remakes" is they never did any good anyway. Even GOOD movies, like Robert Altman's Popeye was lambasted by critics, when frankly, it was closer to Thimble Theater than any of the cartoons made after the 1940's ever were. And, YES! I liked the Flintsones films... both of them, George of the Jungle kept the spirit of the show, and the only thing I felt wrong with Speed Racer is the fact that it turned into a vanity project and the Matrix brothers haven't had a good movie since the second Matrix. But at least they watched the show and got character names right. And Pops Racer couldn't have been better cast. Tough but lovable fat guy= John Goodman. Simple!

Inspector Gadget bugged me because it was clear everyone involved, EVEN Mathew Broderick watched like one episode. They got the town name wrong, the catchphrase wrong... everything they could get wrong wrong. Even the not quite as bad sequel at LEAST got the fact that we're not supposed to see Dr. Claw and he has a gravely voice right. Worst part? They retconned the talking Gadgetmobile for two DTV animated movies... which were pretty good, considering.

Bullwinkle's only folly was forcing a Mary Sue in there.... I mean, face it, the show IS a boy's club and your not going to get little girls to care about an adultish 1960's cartoon if they don't already like it anyway.... but Boris and Natasha were PERFECT!

Now, the bad ones... I regrettably liked the first Chipmunks movie, the second one was barely halfway decent. But that's because the poorly cast Dave Seville didn't even want the check the second time around and we dealt with his loser nephew in a forced "fall in love with Mary Sue" plotline when you had a PERFECTLY good Chipmunks falling for the Chippettes romantic story. If they only used the second film to introduce Dave's neighbor (we all know who I'm talking about) we could have had HER take care of both of them until Dave was conveniently back in the plot. The third one I'm avoiding. The whole concept is based on a bad pun to begin with, but the trailer starts out with a Titanic reference. That's a deal breaker.

Yogi sucked. not because of Yogi or BooBoo or the tired plot with the bad guy (who I actually kinda dug), but a lame Ranger Smith... falling in love with a Mary Sue. Jeez! You need romance in that thing? Cough Cough CINDY BEAR!!!! Why must we have forced, not genuine, mechanically added love stories? Do girls actually like that crap? Is it conditioned?

Garfield sucked because they COULD have said romantic bits with Jon and Liz, but they cast a BAD Jon and a BAD Liz that were nothing like their comic/cartoon counterparts. Jon is supposed to be an incredible supernerd that no one likes, yells frequently, and does weird things out of boredom. But they made him a lovable lug. I HATE lovable lugs! plus, only Garfield was CGI? Yeah, that's not stupid and cheap at all.

Marmaduke... ruining Smurfs is one thing. People know who they are. Marmaduke is an ancient comic strip that wasn't even funny in its heyday, it had one bad cartoon series that lasted barely a season, and he shared it with Heathcliff. It opened 6th and disappeared a week later. Apparently it did okay overseas... probably because China banned some better movies again.

But make no mistake. They made the Smurf movie suck because they wanted to make another Chipmunks, which was a fluke! It was a fluke that it was popular. Something tells me they KNOW the film sucks, and that's why they dumped it late season.

 

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Bullwinkle's only folly was forcing a Mary Sue in there.... I mean, face it, the show IS a boy's club and your not going to get little girls to care about an adultish 1960's cartoon if they don't already like it anyway.... but Boris and Natasha were PERFECT!

Most cartoons are "boy's clubs" frankly. Girls like them anyway.

I think I laughed once, maybe twice in this whole movie. The writing overall just wasn't that funny for me even without the Mary Sue. But I could watch the original cartoon all day long!

 

[Drtooth]

Most cartoons are "boy's clubs" frankly. Girls like them anyway.

I think I laughed once, maybe twice in this whole movie. The writing overall just wasn't that funny for me even without the Mary Sue. But I could watch the original cartoon all day long!

I can give them at least a "they tried." There's so much of the cartoon that was specifically adult humor, so much so that I still think it's hard to believe it was considered a kid's show even then. The pacing was right, the self deprecating humor was right, referencing the fact they were in a movie and questioning the fact that they were CGI and not a real moose and squirrel when the others changed into actors... that stuff really worked and seemed to be exactly what a Bullwinkle movie should be like... but then it went through too many studio heads and they probably watered a lot of it down. But the Mary Sue threw the whole thing out of wack. I mean, I highly question the fact they made them go in the "real world' in the first place, since it was almost unnecessary... It's like they got everything right, but managed to wonk it up somehow. I still like it, though...

Now,I find Dudley Do-Right a far worse movie. Only because Dudley and Nell were poorly cast, all the jokes were usual Canadian jokes about bacon and hockey... Snidely and Inspector Fenwick were pretty close, but Nell was far too proactive... even though she WAS proactive in the last Dudley cartoon. Plus, I question making it take place in a current time line. it was always the close of the 19th century in that show, even with random anachronistic references to Lawrence Welk and television.

But I actually like BOTH George of the Jungle movies. Especially how the sequel kept referencing how they were too cheap to get Brendan Fraiser back.

And while it IS unfairly lumped with Jay Ward due to being produced by the same guy, animated at the same Mexican studio, packaged with the same cartoons, and now owned by the same company... Underdog was crap. I mean, Bullwinkle Tried, Dudley wasn't great, but it tried to a lesser extent, and GOTJ managed to change things but get the same overall feel of the show... but Underdog stripped the character of what made him great. None of those 3 movies mentioned managed to do that.

 

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I can give them at least a "they tried." There's so much of the cartoon that was specifically adult humor, so much so that I still think it's hard to believe it was considered a kid's show even then. The pacing was right, the self deprecating humor was right, referencing the fact they were in a movie and questioning the fact that they were CGI and not a real moose and squirrel when the others changed into actors... that stuff really worked and seemed to be exactly what a Bullwinkle movie should be like... but then it went through too many studio heads and they probably watered a lot of it down. But the Mary Sue threw the whole thing out of wack. I mean, I highly question the fact they made them go in the "real world' in the first place, since it was almost unnecessary... It's like they got everything right, but managed to wonk it up somehow. I still like it, though...

I do think had they stuck with just the cartoon world, it could have been funnier. I'm frankly sick of these remakes using that "going into the real world" scenario. It creates an imbalance in the storytelling. And the "real world" seems more fake and over the top than the cartoon one!

 

[Redsonga]

Question: Did the smurfs ever get any sort of an ending? I always felt like it was going to have one of those David The Gnome Merlin goes into a tree the magic in the world is dying and the smurfs need to find a safe place to live forever sort of endings..it just had that feeling to me...

 

[Drtooth]

I do think had they stuck with just the cartoon world, it could have been funnier. I'm frankly sick of these remakes using that "going into the real world" scenario. It creates an imbalance in the storytelling. And the "real world" seems more fake and over the top than the cartoon one!

It was, however, one of the first to do so. If not the first. Now, had the cartoon world BEEN the real world in the first place it would have flowed better. Though I did dig some of the Hollywood inside jokes, like the Greenlight and the "No Moose pictures!" bit. Plus the useless junk on the internet joke not only holds up, but it becomes truer and truer with every year!

Question: Did the smurfs ever get any sort of an ending? I always felt like it was going to have one of those David The Gnome Merlin goes into a tree the magic in the world is dying and the smurfs need to find a safe place to live forever sort of endings..it just had that feeling to me...

This is going to connect to the movie... to my knowledge, they didn't have an actual ending, but they had that dreaded last season where they were trying to stay relevant and they went through time. Now, they didn't EVER go into present day and mingle with humans like this film does. It seems the film subconsiously takes cues from the horrid last season. That's like if they made a Scooby-Doo movie about the bad episodes where Scrappy kept annoying a big guy who spent the rest of the episode chasing Shaggy and Scooby.

 

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If I get bored, and I can see this dirt cheap, I will give it a shot, but I'd rather keep the money for Thor, Captain America, Green Lantern, Cars 2... .

Part of me is really surprised they're trying Captain America again, I mean after more than one attempt that really didn't fare well in the past to say the least! I mean don't get me wrong, he's not a bag super hero. I just honestly think it's the outfit, it just doesn't translate well to real life.

Still, there's one good thing, this week the SyFy Channel is doing a marathon of Greatest American Hero (a super hero that was intentionally funny, ). Just a quick plug in my Blog, hehe:

http://herald7.wordpress.com/

 

[Drtooth]

Part of me is really surprised they're trying Captain America again, I mean after more than one attempt that really didn't fare well in the past to say the least! I mean don't get me wrong, he's not a bag super hero. I just honestly think it's the outfit, it just doesn't translate well to real life.

Part of me even wonders why they're still doing comic book movies period. Comic book geeks ALWAYS whine about how they're not consistent with their completist collection (and then again, they complain about the directions the comics are taking anyway... nothings' ever good enough for them unless it had Bruce Timm and Paul Dini's involvement), and the general public only knows about like 5 out of a hundred of these guys. And they always need origin stories, leading to long infodumps squashed into a 2 hour film (the problem with Green lantern... spoiler... Sinestro isn't even a villain yet).

But make no mistake... we've getting Thor and Captain America in one year because Avengers comes out next year. These guys need to be established for the general public. And they WILL be played by the same actors, which is pretty amazing. Even the proposed JLA movie that may/may not happen would have used different Batman, Superman, and the rest.

However, I still think Smurfs SHOULD have been handled as a comic book movie instead of a bad nostalgia film. Tintin, mo-cap aside (I haven't seen enough to make a real judgement on the animation, but I STILL want to see this) looks very good. They have people who are FANS working on it. They needed some true blue Smurf fans to smurf a good story... instead they got sarcastic writers who came up with something terrible.