I was big into The Smurfs as a little kid. Really big. Not only did I have Smurf bedsheets and pillowcases, but all the walls of my bedroom were painted Smurf-blue. I must have had close to all of the little Smurf figurines, purchased one-at-a-time from a now long-gone department store by my grandparents' house. I still have most of them, though over the course of frequent play sessions back then I did end up losing my fair share. I know I lost the football player Smurf somewhere at a local beach when the sandcastle in which he resided tragically collapsed and he couldn't be found in the rubble before it was time to go home. I'm sure there's a handful that are still buried in my parents' backyard, along with a fair amount of The Real Ghostbusters action figures--buried treasures that I never could re-find (lousy, quickly-drawn treasure maps!) Then there's the King Smurf figurine that fell into the toilet and my folks had to call a plumber to retrieve when in my panic I accidentally flushed it--and I still have to this day, tucked away in a shoebox with the rest of my collection.
I even had the original Smurf video game for the ColecoVision. So, when The Smurfs started getting released on DVD, needless to say, I was interested.
Here's the thing about nostalgia DVDs: sometimes you rediscover a classic piece of entertainment that stands the test of time (and age difference of its viewer), such as the Disney movie Flight of the Navigator or the classic sitcom Perfect Strangers, while the rest of the time you just sit perplexed and watch your fond memories torn asunder, leaving you to wonder what you saw in said piece of entertainment, as with The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! or Darkwing Duck.
Unfortunately, The Smurfs leans more toward the latter than the former.
While watching the episodes on the Season 1 Volume 2 DVD set, I was bored and bored rather quickly. To my adult eyes and sensibilities, the stories no longer made a lot of sense. They were too basic. In one episode, Clumsy Smurf and Smurfette are captured and placed into a wooden cage, the bars of which were drawn certainly wide enough for the characters to slip past to escape. My adult eyes couldn't forgive this as easily as my young eyes did many years ago.
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Article comments
1 - El Bicho
What terrible parents you had. You weren't supposed to play with your toys. They were supposed to remain pristine in the packaging. I could be rich, rich I tell you, if I had kept that damn X-Wing fighter in the box. Why didn't any adult stick it in the closet?
"you just sit perplexed and watch your fond memories torn asunder"
I have suffered that more times than I would like as well.
great review.