Delayed Reaction: The Smurfs

The Pitch: Live action Smurfs. We wanted to call it "Smurfs Take on Manhattan" but the Muppets already took the title.

How I Came Into It: I've already seen the sequel and couldn't imagine the tone would be much different. I assumed this would be a slightly better distillation of the Smurfs than that sequel was.

Why I Saw It: (Club 50) It's sort of fun to see Hank Azaria completely disappear into a zany role and become the biggest cartoon in the movie, despite going up against actual cartoons. I'm happy to invite NPH and Jayma Mays into my movies in leading roles that (so far) don't come along very often for them.

Why I Wish I Hadn't: It's just too smurf-in' meta. Trying to explain Smurfs in a real world setting like Manhattan (why does it always have to be Manhattan?) is such lunacy that it loses me. That's such an easy juxtaposition.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend