Never thought there was so much life in my old Yes covers.

Rating: 3/10 (7 February 2010)

Where to start. First off it's not as bad as some people say nor is it anywhere near as good as the hype. Basically it's a tired old story and a very unoriginal telling of it to make possibly THE most over rated movie of all time. The plot if you can call it that revolves around a planet populated by hippie smurfs armed with bows and arrows who live in a rather large tree and love everything who find themselves in conflict with evil alien invaders (or Americans as the rest of us know them) who have taken a fancy to a mineral called SpongeBobanium.
Now SpongeBobanium does not seem to actually do anything (because nobody mentions why it's so valuable) but does looks real cool when placed in an ashtray and used for a paperweight and is coveted by said alien invaders who have done all they can to ridicule silly native beliefs and undermine Smurfs way of life by teaching them English and importing Starbucks,Rustyburger and probably baby Jesus to no avail so have decided that killing everyone would be easier so to that end infiltrate a wheelchair bound ex marine to spy on them disguised as a 10 ft smurf. Sadly for alien invaders ex marine goes native almost instantly and falls in love with smurfette princess then proceeds to teach peace loving smurfs how to kick ass by virtue of being the chosen one as ordained by some seeds from a tree. Cue lots of learning about the power of the planet and some soul searching from evil aliens as to whether they are right to do so prior to unleashing a high tech hell onto the peace loving smurfs big tree home which leads to the big fightback scene and ultimate victory for the smurfs. So many tales have been ripped off here that the list would stretch from here to Tokyo. Needless to say very few have been told as dull as this one. Visually it is pretty neat but nowhere near the level that has been drooled over. The landscapes never look real and were better as Yes and Uriah Heep covers in the 70s and I do not believe anyone thought for a second that the smurfs look anything other than CGI generated PC game characters. Obviously JC has gathered all those game designers who worked on C&C and Alien predator as well as a few disgruntled ex Jurrasic park folks but his flora and fauna look as fake as they do in .......fill in the name of your fave PC shooter....... Fun but daft and certainly not worth the million Oscars it is up for. In the same way Titanic was over rated garbage this falls into the same category. Perhaps it has advanced film making a tad or two but even the shiny-shiny of the CGI cannot eclipse the fact the acting is poor and the script drivel. Overlong and ultimately a bit tired and old hat.
The obvious Avatar 2 will be. Jake looks up at the sky lovingly and says to princess smurf. 'look a beautiful shooting star' when suddenly several thousand neutron bombs explode around him killing everything in an instant. Wait a few months for rads to die down then evil aliens come back and mine the cr#p out of smurf planet and take SpongeBobanium back home because smurfs big mistake was not realising we are even more evil then they could possibly imagine. And probably only wanted SpongeBobanium because they had it and we didn't. Earth 1 Smurfs 0......makes you proud to be human! :)