Smurfs: The Lost Village (2017)

(On Cable TV, November 2017) For this newest entry in the Smurfs movie series, The Lost Village wisely dispends with the live-action angle to deliver an all-CGI adventure in which the Smurfette goes looking for a second Smurfs village. In some ways, this isn’t much of a departure from the two live-action films: it’s once again an adventure in which a few selected Smurfs go far away from the village, encountering various hijinks en-route. Once again, Gargamel is along for the ride, doing whatever he can to be a pest. It’s familiar, but it has the decency of being relatively well executed. Some of the jokes are actually funny, the animation is fine by contemporary standards, the creature design is often very cute (wait until you see that glow-bunny!) and the script has a decent amount of girl-power to it since it explores Smurfette’s character and eventually uncovers an all-female second Smurf village. The climactic funeral scene goes on a bit too long, but the rest generally holds together. The Lost Village isn’t particularly challenging, but it does have that Smurfs charm (that same one that the live-action films worked hard to sabotage via such things as testicular jokes) and won’t drive parents of the target audience to distraction.