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STUDIO: Turner Home Ent
MSRP: $26.98
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 319 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“I Smurf the Smurfs!”
The Pitch
The Smurfs are a metaphor for gay utopian society. Let’s make a cartoon about it.
It’s big, but she can handle it.
The Humans
Lucille Bliss, Danny Goldman, June Foray and random voice actors!
The Nutshell
The Smurfs gather in the forest and try to build a utopia. The warlock Gargamel lives alone with his cat and plots their demise. Various weekly events bring both parties into conflict. Little do they realize that their true paths to happiness coincide with one goal. Destroying humanity.
The Lowdown
The Smurfs arrived on NBC during the 1982/1983 season. Growing out of Peyo’s original works, nobody in America gave a shit about the little blue bastards. Then NBC Chief Fred Silverman saw the chance for profit. Observing his daughter playing with a toy he bought her on a trip, Silverman demanded that the little blue bastards get their own show. Thus, television history got another footnote.
She’d still fuck it.
What is there to say about The Smurfs? They’re blue Utilitarian hive-mind individuals that live in a pseudo-Utopia. Nobody has a name, they only have a profession. They come together to solve local problems and fight Gargamel. But, what they do outside of that? Enter the temptress Smurfette.
The real question is…what are they going to do with that piece of cheese.
The voice acting left a lot to be desired. But, there’s something to the character of Smurfette. She gets this bizarre feminine take on what the average Smurf drone sounds like. Since she was originally created as an artificial being by Gargamel, why does she take on such characteristics? Plus, why does the all-male society of the Smurfs accept her as a fellow being? Well, that’s when we get into the sexual politics of a fictional cartoon society.
Smurfette just realized that by the time she turns 30, her vagina is going to look like a Blueberry Sarlaac Pit.
The biggest problem I had upon revisiting the show was how unkind the years had treated it. There are heavy questions to be asked of the series. Hell, I brought up a handful in the paragraph above. What kills the series is that none of those questions are answered. It’s another flood, another lazy Smurf or Gargamel causing trouble. Why does everything have to be so formulaic?
Socialism for children.
The Package
The DVD is a pretty average release that sports the second half of the first season. The A/V Quality holds up for a show that’s older than most of this site’s readers. Throw on a single featurette about people remembering the show and you’ve got the release. It’s a rental at best, but who wants to rent a show like this? Nostalgia will only carry a cartoon so far.
6.0 out of 10