The Smurfs

Directed by Raja Gosnell.Starring Neil Patrick Harris, Hank Azaria, voices of Katy Perry,Jonathan Winters, Sofia Vergara,Anton Yelchin G cert, gen release,

THE SMURFS have been smurfing since the 1950s, when Belgian cartoonist Peyo first smurfed them into existence. Among anglophones, however, they are best remembered as a quirk of the Reagan years, an era when their blue utopia yielded nine seasons as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

The Smurfs were ubiquitous but never cool; kids known for their Schleich Smurf figurine collections were seldom the first to get picked for rounders, and the entire project seemed to ooze forth from the same strange continental hinterland as Kinder Surprise, the Eurovision and lip-synched commercials for vacuuming products. They are, nonetheless, iconic, thanks to their distinctive pigmentation, a kinky one-girl-one-village policy, and a killer theme song.

Sony Pictures, the studio behind this entirely superfluous franchise resuscitation, knows as much. Time and again the Smurf refrain is reconfigurated: it's a work spiritual, it's a call to arms, it's a mash-up with Walk This Way. Time and again, human star Neil Patrick Harris is required to cast his eyes upwards and say "Don't you find that song just a bit annoying?"

Fortunately, Raja Gosnell’s live-action/animation hybrid is happy to foreground its own lack of street cred. The indomitable Harris, the diminutive creatures’ reluctant New York host, is on hand to flinch every time one of his animated co-stars gets down with the kids. “I kissed a Smurf and I liked it,” trills Katy Perry’s Smurfette accordingly.

Following an Avatar-inspired prologue, replete with zippy aerial swooping, the most popular Smurfs – Clumsy, Papa, Smurfette, Brainy, erm, the other three – fall down a vortex for some reason. Will their arch-nemesis Gargamel (Hank Azaria channelling the Child Catcher) nab them before a blue moon reopens the portal to their jolly Teutonic forest? Will everybody stop saying Smurf this and blue that? And will they find time for Guitar Hero, Google and other product placements?

The results should play perfectly well with the same young folks who liked Alvin and the Chipmunks. The Proustian rush from hearing Jonathan Winters – Papa Smurf from the 1981 TV show – reprising the role, may vaguely console adults.