The Smurfs 2
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 "I hate sequels!"
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The Smurfs 2 is a 2013 American fantasy comedy film loosely based on The Smurfs comic book series created by the Belgian comics artist Peyo, produced by Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Animation, The Kerner Entertainment Company, and Hemisphere Media Capital, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing. It serves as a sequel to the 2011 film The Smurfs, the second installment of Sony's Smurfs film series, and the second and final live-action film in the franchise. The film was again directed by Raja Gosnell from a screenplay written by Karey Kirkpatrick and the writing teams of J. David Stem and David N. Weiss, and Jay Scherick and David Ronn, and a story conceived by the latter four. The entire main cast reprised their roles from the first film. New cast members include Christina Ricci and J. B. Smoove as members of the Naughties, Brendan Gleeson as Patrick Winslow's stepfather, and Jacob Tremblay (in his film debut) as Blue Winslow.
The Smurfs 2 was released theatrically on July 31, 2013, and received generally negative reviews from critics for its humor, characters, plot, screenplay and perceived lack of fidelity to its source material. The film was not as commercially successful as its predecessor, grossing $347 million against a $105 million budget. It was dedicated to Jonathan Winters, who voiced Papa Smurf in both films and died a few months earlier before the film's release. A fully animated reboot titled Smurfs: The Lost Village was released on April 7, 2017, directed by Kelly Asbury with Sony and Kerner returning to produce the film while having an all new cast (with the exception of Frank Welker as Azrael).
Plot
Hoping to harness the magical Smurf essence, the evil wizard Gargamel creates a pair of Smurflike creatures, called Naughties. However, only a real Smurf can give Gargamel what he wants, so he kidnaps Smurfette to force her to cast a spell that will transform the Naughties into Smurfs. Papa, Clumsy, and the rest of the Smurfs reunite with their human friends Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays) to rescue Smurfette from the wizard's clutches.
Why It's Still a Prime Candidate to Be Squished by Gargamel
- This movie is way far less faithful to the source material than what made The Smurfs franchise good, or even any of the good qualities of the first film. Not to mention, there are barely even any Smurfs making full appearances in this movie. But unlike the first film (which was set in New York), it is set in a different location, which is Paris.
- Blue Winslow, while cute, is annoying and has an extremely cringe-worthy voice. Aside from that, he contributed absolutely nothing to the plot whatsoever other than to state the obvious of what's happening through the majority of the film.
- The concept of bad Smurfs, also known as Naughties, being created, although interesting, was poorly executed.
- Much of the plot is recycled from the first film, which was already a bad film before.
- The attempts at humor are poor and even worse than in the original film, like the infamous scene where Grouchy Smurf makes horrendous fart bubbles in a sink, followed also by a childish phrase said by this one.
- False advertising: On the DVD case poster, Brainy Smurf is in Paris as the main character, but he never appears and doesn't get a major role as the main character in the movie.
- Patrick Winslow, despite him still being a likable character, was heavily dumbed down in this film into a whiny manchild who is prejudiced against his step-father for releasing his bird due to Patrick himself having a feather allergy to his old pet bird, and is extremely unlikable during the beginning of this movie and his reason for hating his step-father is completely unjustified and pathetic, since Victor is established as a nice guy. He also has no sympathy for his family at all and treats his step-father like a punching bag throughout the whole film which makes Patrick come across as selfish and easy to hate.
- A pointless side-plot of Victor turning into a duck, thanks to Gargamel, which leads to a very cringe-worthy and inappropriate scene where he transforms back to normal in the air and falls naked while trying to carry the smurfs.
- Also, Victor's character gets ruined when he is a duck and he randomly has a different voice actor who has an annoying performance and makes the character insufferable.
- Not to mention the CGI on him, while impressive, looks quite dated and cheap at times when compared to how well-animated The Smurfs are.
- This film is extremely mean-spirited. The Smurfs act like total jerks to Smurfette, even though they were only doing that for her surprise Smurfday, but even then, it makes her feel left out since it's established earlier in the film that she has nightmares of turning evil again, and Papa Smurf still clearly cares for her, and doing so makes her feel like an outcast only because she was created by Gargamel, and they only did it as a lame joke for her birthday, which resulted in her getting kidnapped by Vexy Smurf very easily, making The Smurfs (except for Papa Smurf and Smurfette herself) come off as rude and incompetent idiots for letting one of their siblings down like that, and causing this mistake to happen in the first place. And by the way, they ended up being too late to save Smurfette in time after she was thrown into the portal to Paris by Vexy, thus proving how deadbeat they are to their sister, who had a troubled backstory and has nightmares about being evil again, making them terrible siblings overall.
- Heck, they don't even apologize at the end of the film for what they did, and instead act happy as if that little mishap didn't happen since they clearly should've realized that this is their fault, and really, Papa Smurf should at least tell them to say sorry, but he doesn't.
- There is little to no character development for the majority of the characters, mainly from Vexy and Hackus, who never really get a proper introduction and are never seen or mentioned again after this movie, notably during the events of Smurfs: The Lost Village, or any Smurfs media at that.
- Gargamel's funny charm and wonderful spirit from the previous film were completely downgraded here, as he is far weak with his jokes and his performance is nowhere near as good as in the previous film, as Hank Azaria was probably fed up with playing the character due to how much he hated being in these films and it's obvious with the way how he acts when compared to the previous film where he had fun with the performance and the character overall.
- Not to mention that he is treated like a butt-monkey throughout the film, as he is depicted getting tormented by The Naughties all the time and is now more of a silly father figure rather than the wicked villain he usually is always shown to be, and his new scheme in this movie gets exposed very easily by Patrick and Victor, making Gargamel a complete joke in this sequel when compared to the previous film, where he could be pretty intimidating and strong and knew what he was doing.
- Just like the first film, there are quite a few unnecessary product placements, including one where Azrael has a Facebook account.
- It tries to be hip with the usage of mobile phones that the human characters use all the time, including Gargamel who even has a touchable tablet with him, which is unnecessary and comes across as an outdated addition to the film.
- Similar to the first film, it has an unfitting setting that takes place in modern times instead of a magical fairy-tale setting like the source material.
- Horrible scenes, like the unnecessarily loud and aggravating barks scene, the Grouchy's disgusting fart bubbles scene and the infamous scene in which a kid gets an allergic reaction from eating a corn dog dipped in peanut oil, which is just plain tasteless.
- As mentioned stated, many scenes are recycled from other movies. Aside from copying plot points from the first movie, the plot itself is also a blatant rip-off from Finding Nemo.
- Plot hole: During the end credits of The Smurfs, Smurf Village was being rebuilt in New York's image; however, in this film, the entire village is shown in its original state making it more like a reboot.
- During the scene where Smurfette, Vexy, and Hackus ride the storks, an unknown song can be heard playing throughout. To make matters worse, the song's title is not confirmed, leaving several people to backlash at the latter to point out what the song is called.
- Horrid pacing, since it tends to go either too fast or just drags on for too long without any build-up or tension, and despite being 104 minutes, it feels way shorter than that since some scenes tend to be too quick and result in inconsistent editing that makes the film look unprofessional by comparison.
- The Smurfs look like blue Shreks again because their designs from the previous film with uncannily realistic facial features that don't fit them at all are still present, though they are better here than in the previous film due to having slightly more cartoony features which the previous films lacked.
- Way too many unneeded pop-culture references, including the references of Surface, The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars. It also uses pop-culture songs, such as Vacation.
- The movie has a predictable message about how it doesn't matter who were you before as what matters is who you choose to be, which is a message that has been done in many other kids' animated films before and after, and it's only utilized as the major point of Smurfette's character development which already isn't handled well in the first place, making this message feel forced and cliché.
- Overall, the film ended Jonathan Winter's career on a sour note, since this was the last movie that he ever had a role in before because he passed away on April 11, 2013, only nine days after he had finished recording his dialogue for Papa Smurf.
Reedeming Qualities
- Heitor Pereira's score is solid. Plus, "Ooh La La" by Britney Spears is somewhat decent, albeit not as good as "Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind)" by Panic! at the Disco
- A few genuinely funny moments, like a gargoyle biting Gargamel's butt leading him to scream like a little girl and Grouchy's screaming quote: "I can't see!!! I can't see!! I'm on a darkness lifeless planet that smells like corn dogs!!!" while jump-scaring Victor.
- Still, a few of the actors give decent performances (mainly Patrick and Grace), such as Jacob Tremblay, who did very well playing the role of Blue despite how pointless and annoying the character is. Following this, he would grow up to appear in many movies, like Luca, Room, Good Boys, Wonder, and more.
- The idea of having evil Smurfs (known as Naughties) is interesting despite the poor execution.
- Like any other Sony Pictures Animation movie, The CGI is still great, and even a slight improvement over the original, although Clumsy can seem a bit weaker here.
- Patrick and Victor eventually reconcile while saving the Smurfs.
- Patrick and Grace (despite the former's mild flanderization), are still at least likable characters.
- As mentioned above, Blue Winslow is kind of cute.
- The scene where Smurfette's wand backfires and sends Papa Smurf and all of his Smurfs through a window is very heartbreaking.
- Gargamel lets Vexy and Hackus starve to death which grieves Smurfette is also very emotional and epic. Them turning blue afterward is kind of heartwarming.
- Whilst there is still an excessive amount of product placements in the film, they are not quite as bad as the amount of ones that there were in the first film.
Reception
The Smurfs 2 received much worse reviews than the first movie by critics and audiences for its poor attempts at humor, characters, plot, screenplay, and perceived lack of fidelity to its source material, despite some audiences considering the film as a slight improvement over its predecessor while most critics considered it as its predecessor all over again. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 14% approval rating with an average rating of 4/10 based on 94 reviews; making it the second lowest-rated film ever produced by Sony Pictures Animation on the site behind The Emoji Movie. The website's consensus reads, "Like its predecessor, Smurfs 2 may amuse small children, but it's largely an unambitious, charm-free collection of slapstick gags and one-liners.". On Metacritic, the film has weighted a score of 34 out of 100, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews." The film earned an "A-" from audiences polled by CinemaScore.
Box Office
The film did nowhere near as much as the previous film, it was declared a box-office disappointment in terms of how much it made, doing a total of $347.5 million units at the box office against a $105 million budget with the film not meeting Sony's expectations on how much it would make at the Box Office, as it bombed majorly in Europe and faced a lot of competition with PG-rated films released during 2013, which caused the film to underperform slightly with it resulting the soon to be the third film in the Live Action Smurfs movie series getting canceled due to the disappointing box office results of the second film.
Awards & Nominations
It was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for worst prequel, remake, rip-off, or sequel, but lost to The Lone Ranger.
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