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szdaily -> Movies -> 
The Smurfs 2《蓝精灵2》
    2013-09-13  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Starring: Anton Yelchin, Brendan Gleeson, Christina Ricci, George Lopez, Hank Azaria, Jayma Mays

    Director: Raja Gosnell

    THE global family audiences who powered 2011’s “The Smurfs” to a smurftastic US$580 million gross will find much to enjoy in “The Smurfs 2,” a sequel that changes scarcely a drop of Smurf-essence in its winning formula.

    Tax-incentive Paris is substituted for New York this time, and a few new characters have been added to the mix, but the genially goofy shenanigans, incredibly corny punchlines and Hank Azaria’s go-for-broke performance as the incompetent wizard Gargamel are very much the same.

    Set three years after the events of the first picture, “Smurfs 2” again opens in Smurf Village, where the looming birthday of Smurfette (Katy Perry) provides the occasion for Narrator Smurf (Tom Kane) to recount the story of how the lone female smurf came to be, starting life as the golem-like creation of Gargamel, only to be rescued and turned into a real Smurf by the ever-benevolent Papa (again warmly voiced by Jonathan Winters, in his final film role). That sets the stage for a movie very much about Smurfette’s identity crisis, including her mistaken belief that everyone in the village has forgotten her birthday (when in fact they’re planning a surprise party).

    Meanwhile, Gargamel, last seen left behind in New York, has improbably become a world-renowned stage magician, enthralling packed houses nightly with his Smurf-essence-powered illusions. He’s also made two more ill-fated attempts to create his own Smurfs from scratch, resulting in the pale-skinned “naughties” Vexy (Christina Ricci), who’s like a punk Smurfette, and Hackus (JB Smoove), who seems to have a cavernous chasm where his brain should be.

    Running low on magic supplies, Gargamel is desperate to get his hands on the formula that turned Smurfette blue, which he will then apply to his naughties before bleeding them dry in his suped-up Smurf-a-lator. So he opens another interdimensional portal and sends Vexy to Smurf Village, where she kidnaps Smurfette and brings her to the City of Lights, where Gargamel is preparing to open an engagement … at the Paris Opera!

    Of course, where one Smurf goes, more are sure to follow, and soon Papa, Clumsy (Anton Yelchin), Grouchy (George Lopez) and Vanity (John Oliver) are on the case, with a pit stop in New York to pick up human buddies Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays), now joined by their son Blue (Jacob Tremblay) and Patrick’s gregarious, estranged stepfather, Victor (Brendan Gleeson).

    The Paris scenes are conceived by returning director Raja Gosnell and returning writers J. David Stern, David N. Weiss, Jay Scherick and David Ronn as a series of antic chases in and around such iconic locales as the Opera, Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower and Hotel Plaza Athenee, where Victor, having been transformed into a duck by Gargamel, narrowly avoids ending up as the dinner special. At the same time, the wizard works his strange charm offensive on Smurfette, wooing her with gifts and reminding her that he’s her “real” father, leading one observer to remark that she may be coming down with a case of (wait for it) Smurfholm Syndrome.

    Gosnell and editor Sabrina Plisco keep all this moving along breezily for about as long as humanly possible, then have the good sense to wrap things up rather quickly and bid adieu. Once more, it falls to wise Papa to lend Patrick some advice about parent-child relationships, but Gosnell never tugs too hard on the heartstrings, perhaps realizing that to do so would be sheer folly in a movie about a bald, buck-toothed man in a baggy black sari chasing after little blue creatures.

    The picture’s integration of live-action and animated elements is once again seamless, while the post-production 3D conversion is good of its type but hardly worth the added price of admission. Paris shimmers splendidly through the lens of returning Phil Meheux.

    The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen. (SD-Agencies)

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