The Reel Rejects - THE SMURFS (2011) IS A SMURFIN' FUN TIME!! MOVIE REVIEW!! First Time Watching!!

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

THE SMURFS TAKE ON THE BIG APPLE!! The Smurfs Full Reaction Watch Along:   / thereelrejects   Start your online business with a $1 per-month trial when you visit https://www.shopify.com/rejects! With Rihanna starring in the upcoming 2025 Smurfs Reboot, we're giving our THE SMURFS (2011) Reaction, Recap, Commentary, Analysis & Spoiler Review!! Aaron Alexander and John Humphrey go full blue in this nostalgic deep dive into The Smurfs (2011), the live-action/CGI hybrid comedy directed by Raja Gosnell (Scooby-Doo, Beverly Hills Chihuahua). Based on the beloved Belgian comic and 1980s animated series, this family adventure catapults the tiny blue creatures from their peaceful village into the chaos of modern-day New York City after they escape the evil sorcerer Gargamel through a magical portal. The film features a talented voice cast led by Jonathan Winters (Mork & Mindy, The Flintstones) as the wise Papa Smurf, Katy Perry (pop superstar, Jeremy Scott: The People’s Designer) as the sweet and sassy Smurfette, George Lopez (Rio, The George Lopez Show) as Grouchy, Alan Cumming (X2: X-Men United, The Good Wife) as Gutsy, Anton Yelchin (Star Trek, Alpha Dog) as Clumsy, Fred Armisen (Saturday Night Live, Portlandia) as Brainy, and Paul Reubens (Pee-wee’s Big Adventure) as Jokey. On the human side, Neil Patrick Harris (How I Met Your Mother, A Series of Unfortunate Events) stars as Patrick Winslow, a marketing executive who helps the Smurfs find their way back home, with Jayma Mays (Glee, Red Eye) as his supportive wife, and Hank Azaria (The Simpsons, Godzilla) fully embracing the role of the villainous Gargamel in a delightfully over-the-top performance. Sofia Vergara (Modern Family) also appears as Patrick’s demanding boss. Packed with slapstick comedy, magical hijinks, and heartwarming moments, the film includes memorable scenes like the Smurfs causing chaos in FAO Schwarz, Gargamel's frantic chase through Central Park, and Papa Smurf’s touching leadership that anchors the team. Whether you grew up with the classic cartoons or are discovering these characters for the first time, The Smurfs delivers a colorful, family-friendly ride. Follow Aaron On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealaaronalexander/?hl=en Follow Aaron On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealaaronalexander/?hl=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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More on them in just a bit. So, yeah, without further ado, let's get smirfed up. Animation Monday, baby. You guys, if you listen to this on Apple or Spotify, make sure you give us five smirfs. That's right. Leave us five smurfing stars. Smive Smurf and Stars

Guys Oh well we're looking up some smurf facts I'm gonna say I'm just looking to see who are There's whizzing by so fast they try to get us past the credits And the credits moving quickly anyway I was gonna say let's let's get a quick Quick recap around who all the voices are Because uh I thought you know the smurf voices is pretty fun

Overall yeah pretty good job Yeah we got Jonathan Winters All right I know yeah I know his his name, certainly. Oh, I guess the dog's actually a character. Look, the actual dog. Look out now. Okay, so, yeah, Alan Cumming was gutsy, the Scottish one.

We got Katie Perry, Fred Armisen was brainy, George Lopez Grouchy. Clumsy was Anton Yeltson, my boy, rest in peace. Keenan was greedy for like a hot second there. Jeff Foxworthy was handy. John Oliver was vanity. Wolfgang Puck was the freaking chef. Oh, wow. That's fun.

Yeah, Paul Rubin. was joky. A guy named Gary Barsaraba was hefty. B.J. Novak was the baker. Tom Cain, narrator Smurf, definitely heard his voice in a thousand things. Oh, he's the narrator from the Clone War stuff too. Oh, nice. And played Dr. Loomis in Halloween H-2O.

John Casier was crazy smurf, who I believe was also the cryptkeeper. Joel McCrary, Farmer Smurf, Frank Welker. And hey, Jacob Bertrand, who plays Hawk on Cobra Kai, was apparently boy number one somewhere in this movie. Goodness gracious, yeah. Let's get us some patron questions going. But, yeah, we smirfed. We came, we saw, we smurfed. We smurfed, we conquered.

You just let me. Okay. I just want to see if it's post-credit scene. I doubt it, but. Okay, no. You just let it roll. Let it roll. All right.

gang from our lovely royal rejects. Here we go. We got some questiones and we will start right here at the bottom

where things begin. Let's see. JC. I'll start with JC. Yeah, I have a couple of smurfs questions.

Which is always how you want this to open up. Who is making you watch this and do you need help? Who is making us watch this? The fact that there is a new Smurfs movie in the Year of Our Lord 2025 is the chief reason we are checking this out at the moment. Do you need help? I mean, not in the visual sense, but I'm okay. But yeah, this was a smurf in time. Blink twice.

I feel like we're doing okay We're doing pretty good Let's see here A lot of excitement for some other movies That are shooting today Let's see let's see let's see Let's see Okay second Smurfs question

I guess it's only two Smurst questions today Let's see this is from Oh my The big old 3D Smurve just popped into frame Let's see DeAndre Has this to say Thank you for chiming in

I know it's unrelated, but Smurfs makes me think of kids' movies like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Y'all should do those sometime. We could. In fact, I've never seen those movies, and I'm sure there will be a reason to do them in some point. So, you know, let's do it. I'll be down. I'm down for some Alvin' Chipmunks. Yeah.

I guess we can just start reading questions from the other shoots. You guys are going to have a lot to talk about during your one today. Oh, man. And apparently, I'm just going to read this just because. hopefully you guys do bring her back it's the best horror movie of the year so far from the directors of talk to me thank you angry pigeon especially for this kid's movie I felt

important to read that wish for us to cover a very very bleak and adult movie anyway thank you guys for chiming in Aron how you feeling about these old smurfs uh huh it was

you know it wasn't it was an all right time It had some heart, you know, had some smurfing comedy. Had a lot of smirfs in it. Okay, he does have a chipped ear in the cartoon. No digital cat was harmed in the making of this picture. That's fun.

I would not. I would hope so. But yeah, it was, it was all right. You know, I had a few laughs and had some heart, had some famous people I recognized. Mm-hmm. And had some, some catchy music from the early, late 20. the zeros, the early 2010s, you know, it was a movie that it happened and go Smurfs, go Smurfs. How are you feeling, John?

I feel all right. I feel all right. You know, this was certainly pleasant. This was, I like, you know, this is the standard. I feel like there is, what am I trying to say? There are a couple approaches, I feel like, that are tried and true for adapting some kind of older cartoon, especially into live action. And this is certainly going down the road of like, oh, they're transported from their world into our world. They're going to get back home somehow. Uh, you know, just like the, the classic place to start for one of these. And, uh, it did all the stuff that you kind of expect from that setup. Uh, you just in a smurf package. Um, you know, at, the, At times, I guess, because we're recontextualizing this for a new age,

I get torn because part of me is like, I get it. And there's like a fun, you know, a quality to the fish out of water. Like, ooh, they're in New York. They're in our world. What are they going to do? How are they going to interact? But part of me sort of was sitting there going like, you know, man, it would be cool to actually like see this just take place in like Smurf Village or, you know, in the

realm of the Smurfs and Gargamel. Not that I was like upset that it was in our place and time, but because it is doing, again, a very familiar setup and, you know, it's not doing anything revolutionary with that setup. It's mostly resting on the charm of the writing and the actors. You know, it's just it crossed my mind. But yeah, like, you know, this was more pleasant than I had maybe expected from my initial impression based off the trailer when it first came out. you know like when this was coming out i wasn't all that interested um but you know uh again having grown up with some you know association to the smurfs uh i had fun you know like again it's not like brilliant but all the actors showed up and what i will say is uh like i like i like the smurfs

in this i really liked um what is her name i really liked nph and uh and his wife character and like granted they're not the lion's share of like what's going on on screen but But that's a kind of thing that this movie also has to do. Give us your human cipher characters. Jama Mays, that's her name. You know, give us our human eyeline peeps who we can identify with or whatever. And yeah, like that doesn't always land or sometimes you're like, ah, get back to the Smurfs or whatever.

And this was an instance where I was like, you know what? The scenes that are just between the two of them that are like about their life are really lovely. And it's interesting to see NPH, especially in a situation. where again he's he has to pretty much be the jokes aside straight man you know he has to be the kind of yeah a person reacting to all the absurdity and and you know his wife character is the one who's trying to open him up to the magic of it all um but their backs and forths were like just grounded of performance because like nph can very much be himself when he shows up in certain things and not that he isn't here but like there was something very earnest about him and uh and

the Jima Mays character as well and I thought they were really natural with each other and those scenes just kind of rose off the screen or page or whatever you want to say and yeah like really charmed me and we're like oh man I can watch more of you guys you know and it's nice in a movie like this

where oftentimes it's like ah we we have to deal we're sort of bogged down by dealing with these characters and I think that's one thing that movies like this have gotten a lot better at over time I was thinking of like the Sonic movies especially during this partly because yes blue character transported through a ring to

New York or to human world and then a charming guy and his wife lady have to help them out wife lady you know like and and uh and uh you know like James Marsden in those movies

and Tika Sumter I think it is like they're really charming and I really enjoy them to the point where like in part three I was like oh I wish they were around more uh so yeah like it was cool at least like the human stuff wasn't a drag and you know yeah the hijinks are are fun enough and the smirfs are fun enough you know i get the sense that yeah this is more for

kids or or this will hit better for kids um who are just learning about this who don't have any prior association or anything like that and then you have the uh the adult characters there so you can have adults be kind of entertained or the the smurf stuff is happening yeah yeah i think that you know it tries to walk this interesting line of being authentic to what the experience of the Smurts were like. We're also updated for our modern audience released by 2011 standards. And I think he did it well enough. Maybe some individual arcs for the Smurfs other than Climsy could have, you know,

maybe added some more dynamic to the movie because it felt like, you know, they had their individual personalities. I felt like goal-wise and interest-wise, except for a little bit of a smurf that they all kind of were going towards the same thing. and maybe some division because there wasn't a lot of conflict really with them and I don't know maybe it just made things a little bit more interesting

it was a lot most of the comedy sort of fell flat for me there were some moments that you know did get me and I felt like Hank his area's Gargamel was the

the right pitch for the type of movie that this was in relation to the Smurfus yeah he was just as cartoony as the smirfs themselves were which made that sort of dynamic work yeah he's really fun to watch yeah he was fun to watch you can tell he's having a good time and he's got to act against himself a ton he's acting himself and you know I'm curious to know what happened with that cat

um it was there's some scenes where it looks good there's other scenes where it didn't look too good I admire the the Sony animation team I get like Sony pictures animation specific specifically seems like it's been in this position because weren't they goosebumps too? Like stuff where like there's a heavy animated slash CG element to the movie but it's not necessarily an animated movie and it's like you know you've got the smurfs

and the smurf world and like in the outset of this movie I was like oh it's like an animated movie and I'd forgotten that like oh we're gonna go do photorealism and we're not photorealism we're gonna go to actual real world and we're gonna implant smurfs in there so like the smurfs and stuff look really good in our world but the cat yeah because it's there's an uncanny valley there and i and i admire

that they were making the effort to like use a real cat and then sweeten it with effects but it was the one effect where i was like i feel like you should have gone with one or the other right both is becoming a very and it it was enjoyably odd but certainly i don't think the desired effect for that because you can tell immediately which one is which yeah and when you're yeah when you're with which version and it there are a lot of things that speak to the talent and the skill that the Sony animation team has to offer and that is not the best example of that um because you know this murfs themselves look good and the interactions with the environments and stuff look good and you know there are a lot of hijinks that i'm sure are cgiene sweetened um you know and uh yeah as

like a uh uh i admire at least that sony pictures animation has gone for this sort of niche where it's like, no, there's definitely a heavy animated movie element, but it's not a fully animated movie. Yeah. So that's kind of neat. So, yeah, she was good. Did we confirm his name was Tim Gunn? Tim Gunn. He was on one of those

like fashion reality shows. He's a, you know, figure in the fashion world. Yeah, and it's probably on a realty TV and whatnot. Reject Nation, when we started our Reject Nation shop, I honestly thought that we would only sell to like a handful of people who liked our channel.

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Go to Shopify.com slash rejects to start your $1 per month trial. That's Shopify.com slash rejects. Thank you again, Shopify, for sponsoring this video. Yeah, it's, it is definitely an unique film in that regard. You know, you have these people that you wouldn't think would be in animated slash live action hybrids. And we've had our fill of, you know, these characters from one world going to our world and hide jinks and shenanigans ensue.

And yeah, this is, this is a decent one. I feel like they were able to keep true to the core of what the Smurfs were like. And I'm wondering for the big Smurf fans out there, was this? Smurf heads. The Smurf heads. Was this something that really appealed to you? Did you feel like you were reliving your childhood while watching these Smurfs do their thing? Or did you want to see them more in their Smurf Village?

I feel like the beginning was fun. I think the beginning of the movie felt the most like, uh, live action cartoon for yeah better uh yeah for like a better term but i i had a decent enough time it was it was a movie and it had it happened and it was it was colorful i was i was never bored watching it i was i can say that yeah um yeah they found ways to just keep the the the hijinks and shenanigans a going was it yeah was it i it walks that line i'm not even walks a line uh because there's family movies and there's children movies and I feel like this falls on the war of the children movies with children movie side with adult flourishes so they can keep uh entertain themselves

and there were some adult flourishes in there yes some stuff where i was like wow i guess this you know that's the thing about watching anything when you're more of an adult is is seeing things and being like oh wow they really wrote a lot for the parents here and then realizing like ah but if i was you know the age i would have been watching something like this as a kid I probably still wouldn't have picked it up because so many movies from our actual childhood have that

yeah like you know this was more in joy like you know I'm more optimistic about most movies in this position we're at here because that's part of the fun is sort of like let's see how it hits us let's see what works let's see what doesn't at the time this was coming

out I was probably more pessimistic about it and so like this never really annoyed me it wasn't so busy and shrill that it got unpleasant or anything like that. No, it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't maybe massively inspired on the page. There weren't like a lot of jokes where I was like, oh my God, that's amazing or I would have, you know, never thought of that. But, you know, again, yeah, charming at least, uh, despite being, again, pretty familiar in terms of the nuts and bolts of it. And yeah, like, it is very modernized. Like, again, I don't, I don't have the freshest

recollection of like, you know, the ins and outs of the classic Smurfs cartoons and stuff like that. But I have to imagine that this isn't really translating a ton of that vibe. Like, you know, certainly the Smurfs themselves are good nature and they each have their own little specialty, their own little theme. Um, but you know, they made them rap and they put bling on them and they made them dance and stuff. So, you know, like they're doing all the, the requisite like there's a certain amount of this that feels like we're doing all the requisite animated movie stuff and then there's some stuff that's like oh yeah it's kind of a fun smurf is a more just a fun thing that's unique to this movie um so well you got the you got the r t all right let's hear it

do you want to guess or was that this movie got a 50 smurf it's okay that's critics critics 50 smurf percent about audience smurfs 60 smurf percent. So I got 21 smurfs. Wow. Critics smurfs. Okay. I was way optimistic about that. I don't think kids vote. Is there no audience score? No, there's audience score. It's 43%. That tracks. That tracks. I highballed that. Some days I'm on and some days I'm off. You're optimistic. Yeah. I guess thinking about critics now and then looking back at what just happened and again, I didn't really have any major gripes, but also I think neither of us is sitting here being like, man, this is underrated.

Right. So, yeah, 21 and 40 odd. I could definitely see that. Apparently the filmmakers cast Katie Perry without knowing it was her. What? They had done a blind test where they took certain voices from previous interviews and matched them with the character. They liked the voice without even knowing who it was.

And when they found out it was me, oh, this is a quote. They thought that would work out. My personality was just a plus. I'm surprised they didn't have her do a song. Wow. You didn't think, right? And that speaks to that, I suppose. And it's funny because some pop stars in the trolls movies,

and I feel like they do take advantage of that. During filming, each Smurf was presented by a different colored dot on set. And actors and actresses had to remember which dot was which Smurf. Oh, golly. Let's see. Katie Perry, who voices Smurf at in this film and the Smurfs 2 from 2013. Keep a lookout for that. I imagine.

I assume we'll do that. I don't know. Don't quote me. Clyde Baron Ford. I know you are. Katie Perry wasn't allowed to watch the, original Smurfs in 1981 the 1981 series as a child

her parents were highly conservative pastors and didn't consider it to be good for children as there was magic in it 268 Sony pictures Image Works employees that spent around 358,000 hours animating Smurfs

Anton Yeltsin who voices clumsy Smurf RIP too one of my one of my favorite actor yeah one of my favorite it's when he was coming up and still to this day like pangs my heart he described his role

as a little sweeter than in the original cartoon clumsy isn't trying to mess anything up for anybody he's just clumsy and actually he's tired of being clumsy that's kind of a neat little update according to Belgian cartoonist Peyo Pierre Culliford the Smurfs never take off their caps

however they do so in the movie by using them as parachutes when jumping down from an apartment balcony relatives of payo demanded that for that scene the smurfs are only seen from above or below so we never get to see those smooth smurf domes i saw one let it slip a little bit wow they snuck it in there snuck it in dude i bet the estate's going to sue their ass for that once they find out all these years later once they see this reaction because no one said it prior to this gargamel smurf later took three months to build due to its components having to be sourced from garage sales flea markets eBay and craigslist wow that's that's fascinating i'm actually surprised to hear that given the again movies work on a very sort of like chop chop what can we drive across town what can we send four pas across town to get today

yeah the sunny pictures image works animators studied human skin and coloration in developing the textual quality of the smurf skin so the smurfs will not seem alien in a live action setting uh each of the two times the smurfs right on top of the cabs There's an advertisement for something blue. We caught that. The first scene in the film is a pan over a medieval land to Smurf Village featuring Smurfs writing Storks. This is an homage to the opening credits of Smurfs, 1981,

which featured the same shots. Oh, wow. And to prepare for his role as Grouchy Smurf, apparently George Lopez did not drink coffee, make sure he had bad breath and picked the busiest time to get to the studio. Good God. Just set himself up for difficulty. That's funny.

Let's see. according to the this will be the last one for now according to the Sony Image Works animators the Smurfs are seven and a half inches tall

this height was decided upon after numerous tests any larger and they would no longer appears the lovable creatures for which they are known any smaller and it would be difficult

for them to relate to real world objects and people that's fun oh my God and they built apparently a replica of the Belvedere Castle

at two-thirds scale oh wow for this um yeah golly no and apparently this is the first smirfs media where joky smurf is voiced by a male because women can be funny that's right

smirfs proved it look at that all right look at that we did it this was all right this was all right it was fun while it was on I'll give it that it was fun while it was on guys do you want to be a smurf let us know down the comments below what's your favorite smurf and moment of this movie what's your favorite

smurf and moment in smurf's and smurf life of that blue moon thing i'm gonna say that's probably what i'm a member the most and be like that ad campaign he came up with was really strong killer someone needs to repurpose that uh anyway guys that'll be us for us today and we're rowdy i don't know why you're catching some some rare smurf disease i am we got some hairball some smurf that hair in your throat smurf i need it for my machine You know the DEPs

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