Just when I thought seeing the first film wasn’t bad enough, we have the sequel ‘The Smurfs 2’ after the first film’s financial success of grossing more than half a billion dollars. So a sequel was inevitable. Is it better than its forgettable predecessor? Let’s find the Smurf out. (And yes, there are many more Smurf puns. Hooray?!)

‘The Smurfs 2’ finally goes into the backstory of Smurfette (since it was briefly mentioned in the first film). Although, it is her birthday today and all the other Smurfs are planning to surprise her. Thinking everyone forgot, she gets pushed into a portal by a Naughty, created by Gargamel, and now leaves the other Smurfs to venture off to save Smurfette.

Look, this film isn’t funny. It’s filled with crude jokes, surprising amount of mature themes, and stupid Smurf puns like “Smurf-xactly” and “Smurfed through the portal”. These puns are so unbearable and annoying to listen too, but they keep repeating in sentences, over and over again. Didn’t they get the memo from the first film’s criticism? It’s Smurfing annoying. Like, there’s a line that references Facebook in the Smurf village when one of the Smurfs says “Smurfbook”. Now that doesn’t make any sense. There’s another scene of a YouTube clip being presented and a random person is capturing footage of Gargamel using his wand to lift a taxi cab into the air, only to be crushed by it. The thing that frustrates me is the cat is speaking in cat language, you know cat sounds. However, this random YouTuber must know cat because there’s English subtitles for us to see. How does that make any Smurfing sense?!

Putting myself back together, there’s a scene that involves Papa Smurf and Patrick about how to be a better father, and you know what, it’s a nice message towards the kids that are seeing this movie. If not for anything else, I like the film is trying to convey a good message, even if it is surrounded by dumb shtick. I also surprisingly liked Smurfette’s bond with the new Naughty of Vexy.

‘The Smurfs 2’ is equally as dumb as the first film, and like the first film, it provides a good moral message, but that’s about it. It’s a Smurf-astrophe.

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