Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 11 February

The Smurfs 2 (Gosnell, 2013)

I was chat­ting to friend of the news­let­ter MC of Mt Victoria the oth­er day and he sug­ges­ted that we are over­due for a sub­scriber drive.

This is an excel­lent idea and if every read­er recom­mends Funerals & Snakes to one more per­son then – counts fin­gers – our read­er­ship here will double. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Just in time for the announce­ment yes­ter­day that Chris Miller (Puss in Boots, Shrek the Third) is dir­ect­ing a reboot of the Smurfs uni­verse – a teas­er played dur­ing yesterday’s Super Bowl with Rihanna tak­ing over the icon­ic role of Smurfette from Katy Perry – the pre­vi­ous three Smurfs movies have dropped on to Neon in Aotearoa.

I’m not sure why it is that the second film in a semi-animated fran­chise should be the best. Perhaps the les­son is to cast Brendan Gleeson who stole Paddington 2 and who brings more heart and soul to The Smurfs 2 than any­one has a right to expect. From my ori­gin­al review in Capital Times:

I was no great fan of the first Smurfs live-action film (“lumpy … utterly charm­less”) but the second out­ing took me very by sur­prise. Hank Azaria’s wicked wiz­ard Gargamel has hatched anoth­er dast­ardly plan to cap­ture the Smurfs and squeeze their essence out of them like blue­ber­ries at break­fast time, there­fore refuel­ling his magic dragon-wand. To the res­cue comes Neil Patrick Harris, this time with his step­fath­er played by Brendan Gleeson. Their rela­tion­ship is a rocky one but its res­ol­u­tion ably rein­forces the main theme of the movie – that the fam­ily you choose is more import­ant than the fam­ily you were born into. I cry at movies all the time but was not expect­ing to cry at this one.

Also fea­tured in that October 2013 column: Chris Hemsworth as British Formula 1 driver James Hunt in Ron Howard’s Rush; Snow White story Blancanieves from the dir­ect­or who brought us Robot Dreams last year, Pablo Berger; Michael Gondry’s Mood Indigo; “naked cash-grab” Planes from Disney; Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters; One Direction: This Is Us, dir­ec­ted by the late Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame; and anoth­er music movie, the wack­a­doodle con­cert film Metallica: Through the Never.

Where to watch The Smurfs 2

Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon, Netflix, Prime Video and ThreeNow (free with ads)

Australia: Streaming on Netflix, Binge, Foxtel and Stan

Canada: Streaming on Starz

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Sky

India: Streaming on SonyLIV

USA: Streaming on Paramount+

Further listening

Now that my sum­mer stint on At the Movies is over, I’m back at my weekly Friday gig on Nights. Last Friday, I chat­ted with Mark Leishman about Alien Weaponry: Kua Tupu Te Ara (in cinemas), Broadway music­al Come From Away (Apple TV+) and my free stream­ing option was Nicolas Cage in Pig (Māori+).