So I thought I'd introduce them to my kids. (I guess I haven't learned yet that if there is something I enjoyed from my childhood, leave it alone) Well watching Smurf's now is an entirely different experience.
The voices alone make me want to punch them in the smurfing head, but it gets much worse from there.
1. The proportions are all off! Smurfs are not as tall as three apples, like it says in the introduction. They are more like as tall as one apple, they often hide behind things that are smaller than an apple. In fact they sometimes have proportionally small apples that they eat. Their homes are massive mushrooms. Have you ever seen a mushroom that smurfing big? I don't think so. Just pick a size and be consistent.
2. Gargamel and Azrael have got to be the dumbest criminals in the world, if they can't catch a bunch of blue bugs. And after they do catch them it seems they always keep them alive, waiting for them to escape. Seriously, get a brain! If you need them alive, smurf off their legs, or knock them unconscious, or take their hats and accessories so they can't tell each other apart.
3. What are we supposed to learn from the Smurfs? Blow up your friends, be a whinny know-it-all, only develop one characteristic, don't wear shirts? They pretty much ignore any good advice, and then their papa smurfs them out of trouble. I'm not sure if there is anything good we can take from these little blue devils.
4. Stereotyping is not very smurfy.
5. Smurfette has gotten a bad reputation over the years. I know she's the only girl in a village filled with shirtless blue midgets, and somehow a baby smurf comes, but it's a kid show so I'm not going to accuse her of being a flirt, or worse. I just think she's really really smurfing stupid. "Oh Papa, I'm just a dumb blonde, please come and help me get out of this problem I've created..." I think If I were Papa Smurf I'd let her get eaten by Azrael, but perhaps he likes the eye candy.
6. Magic is really smurfy in the world of the Smurfs. It seems that the only consistent thing is that Smurfs posses some kind of magic so that if Gargamel can ever get his act together, he could somehow use them to make gold. I know they're blue and they are small and all that, but if they really do have magic qualities, why it is that only Papa can actually use magic? Why doesn't he teach the others to make potions? Maybe if he gave them something to do, they wouldn't be out ignoring his warnings all the time.
7. Why are their hats all bent over? I wonder if Smurfs originally had funny shaped heads. If they just have normal heads, someone should teach them about baseball caps, or stocking caps. If not that, they could just embrace their baldness, that would be smurftastic.
8. I get holes in my socks much more than I smurf holes in the knees of my pants. I'm just saying that they should probably reconsider their pants. They probably wouldn't need Tailor Smurf to do so much work if they just made shoes separate from their pants. Smurfette has shoes, so somebody must know how to make them. It really can't be all that easy to get dressed either. I know I wouldn't want to wear smurf pants all the time.
9. I was talking to my smurf about the smurfing show the other smurf and we smurfed that it just needs to smurf rid of some of the smurf and it would be smurfier. I said, "I want to take that smurfing smurf and smurf him into the next century." But I might be a smurf extreme, and you might think I'm a smurf of a smurf for suggesting that.
Brainy would probably tell me, "Why didn't you make a list of ten? Papa Smurf always says, list should have a nice even number." But then I could be the lucky smurf that gets to either ignore the annoying fool called 'Brainy' or the other guy who throws him violently on his head end then tosses his book too.
So now that my kids are hooked on watching the Smurfs I get to relive my childhood fun, or a least ask myself, why the smurf I ever liked that show!
Picture from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.happ.smurfs