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Irish Independent

Smurfs review: Rihanna is Smurfette – but this shoddy musical reboot is among the laziest animations of the year

It's as if comic strip artist Pierre 'Peyo' Culliford's blue-skinned forest dwellers weren't designed for a big-screen feature-length movie. The format doesn't suit them – and this shoddy musical reboot ranks among the laziest animations of the year. Rihanna, would you believe, is a producer of this vacuous fantasy from director Chris Miller (Puss in Boots) and writer Pam Brady (Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken). The Barbadian superstar also lends her voice to Smurfette, the only female Smurf in the village, whose patience is severely tested after a mob of wicked wizards kidnap her beloved Papa Smurf (John Goodman). Business as usual, then. But we also have a Smurf with an identity crisis (James Corden's No Name Smurf), and a bizarre trip to the real world, where nothing much happens and nobody ever notices the tiny blue trespassers. Natasha Lyonne and Nick Offerman provide support, and they'll appreciate the pay packets, I'm sure. But this new-and-­unimproved Smurfs movie shows very few signs of intelligent life.