Posts Tagged ‘Maya Erskine’

SMURFS: 2 ½ STARS. “To use Smurf vernacular, ‘It’s a load of smurf.’” 

SYNOPSIS: In the new animated movie “Smurfs,” starring the voice of Rihanna and now playing in theatres, what begins as No Name Smurf’s (James Corden) search for identity becomes a more traditional rescue mission when Papa Smurf (John Goodman) is abducted by the evil wizard Razamel (JP Karliak).

CAST: Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Kurt Russell, and John Goodman. Directed by Chris Miller.

REVIEW: A fun but ultimately underwhelming addition to the “Smurf” film series, the fourth franchise instalment “Smurfs” brings the whimsy and some good messages for kids but mostly feels like a rehash of their other films.

The action, which is pedal to the metal, begins with No Name Smurf’s (James Corden) identity crisis. Rather, his lack of identity crisis. Like the Seven Dwarfs, all the other Smurfs have names that reflect their personality. There’s Brainy Smurf (Xolo Maridueña), Vanity Smurf (Maya Erskine), Worry Smurf (Billie Lourd) and so on. When No Name suddenly develops the ability to summon magic from his fingertips, he feels he has found his purpose.

Problem is, his new powers attract the attention of evil wizard Razamel (JP Karliak) who kidnaps Papa Smurf (John Goodman) to get his evil hands on a magical book hidden in Smurf Village.

That sets off a rescue mission. Led by No Name and Smurfette (Rihanna, who produced the film plus wrote and recorded an original song for the soundtrack) the merry band of Smurfs travel the world. From a crazy claymation world and the inside of a mirror ball to real world (i.e. not animated) hotspots like France and Germany, they leave no stone unturned in their search.

To use Smurf vernacular, “It’s a load of smurf.”

That is to say, there’s a lot going on, often at a pace that resembles a blue streak smeared across the screen. Many of the sequences are imaginative, bordering on psychedelic—I think I now understand why the Smurfs live in magic mushrooms, er… make that mushroom houses—that entertain the eye and display a level of craft, but it’s as if director Chris Miller and screenwriter Pam Brady amped up the action to supersonic speeds to distract from the fact that story wise this is as basic as it gets.

Tone wise, it’s a different story. There’s a handful of heartfelt, radio friendly pop songs, and while they’re good tunes, there’s not enough of them to be able to call this a musical.

There are laughs, although at least some of them are of a decidedly adult nature. The film’s biggest giggle, for the grown-ups anyway, comes near the end with some judiciously applied censor bleeps courtesy of Sound Effects Smurf (Spencer X).

Like I said, “It’s a load of smurf.” A hodgepodge of music, gentle mayhem, intergenerational humour and good messages about respect, community, resilience and being yourself, it’s well performed by an interesting array of voice actors (Rihanna, John Goodman, James Corden, Nick Offerman, Daniel Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Kurt Russell to name a few)  but the scattershot storytelling may leave you feeling blue, but not in the way the filmmakers intended.

AN AMERICAN PICKLE: 3 ½ STARS. “an unexpected sense of poignancy.”

“An American Pickle,” the new Seth Rogen movie now streaming on Crave, begins as a fish-out-of-water—or perhaps it should be a pickle-out-of-brine—comedy but gradually settles into a heartfelt story about blood being thicker than pickle juice.

The first time we see Rogen he’s playing Herschel Greenbaum, a laborer living in the Eastern European country of Schlupsk. He’s a ditch digger, married to Sarah (Sarah Snook), who dreams of a better life, one that involves one day being able to afford drinking seltzer water. In 1919 he and Sarah immigrate to America, where he gets a job killing rats at a pickle factory.

One day on the job, while everyone is distracted by the Condemned signs being posted on the front door, he stumbles into a vat of pickles, is sealed up and preserved in brine for 100 years.

He re-emerges, unchanged, in present day Brooklyn. His closest living relative is his great grandson Benjamin (also played by Rogen), who is exactly the same age (minus the 100 years of brining) as Herschel was and is. “I can’t wait to show you the future,” Benjamin says.

Benjamin helps his great grandfather negotiate the new world—“Imagine, a Greenbaum with twenty-five pairs of socks,” Herschel marvels—but when Herschel’s old-world temperament blows a five-years-in-the-making business deal for Benjamin, the relationship becomes as sour as an old deli pickle.

Feeling the burn, Benjamin tries to sabotage his grandfather’s burgeoning pickle business but instead Herschel becomes an online sensation as a beacon of free speech.

“An American Pickle” is “Encino Man” with a heart. The oddball, one joke premise gets the action started but it’s just kindling for what comes later. Screenwriter Simon Rich (who wrote the short story “Sell Out” the movie is based on) weaves in comments on the internet age, cancel culture and assimilation, themes that enrich a story that could have relied on one-liners and time travel gags.

It’s uneven in tone, dragging in the middle section, but between the laughs there is an unexpected sense of poignancy. “The world has changed,” Herschel says. “Everything I know is gone. Everyone I knew.” The comedy is broad but the heart of the story, the sense of the importance of family, inner strength and the feeling of displacement immigrants often feel in a new land are all handled sensitively. Rogen, in the dual roles, brings both the laughs and tenderness.

“An American Pickle” works as a satire of modern life but works best when it wears its heart on its sleeve.