Another Lousy Sequel: The Smurfs 2

The Good: Generally good moral, Most of the voice performances are good.
The Bad: Simplistic plot, character arcs, and dialogue, Underwhelming special effects.
The Basics: The Smurfs return with a less-than-spectacular sequel with The Smurfs 2.


Sequels and children’s movies have a hard time getting good reviews from me. I am not against films for young people – often enough they have good messages and the best have a decent charm factor to them – but frequently they are made figuring that their target demographic is less-discriminating and an inferior product is churned out by the studios. Sequels, more often than not, are not the result of having more of a story to tell, but rather the financial success of the first film feeding into the studio’s desire to see similar returns on investment. The Smurfs 2 is definitely that type of sequel.

The Smurfs 2 is a live-action sequel that follows up on the events of The Smurfs (reviewed here!). The movie is intended for a younger audience and while one might assume that Neil Patrick Harris was under contract to do The Smurfs 2, how Brendan Gleeson became associated with the project is a mystery to me. The Smurfs 2 trades on fairly advanced computer generated graphics to blend the live-action elements with the artificial Smurfs and utilizes the voice talents of some very talented individuals (and Katy Perry) to embody the Smurfs and their new, evil, counterparts, The Naughties.

After a retcon with the story of how Smurfette was created, after originally being a creation and tool of Gargamel, Smurfette has a nightmare of reverting. Papa Smurf reassures Smurfette. Meanwhile, in the real world, Gargamel has become a huge celebrity doing magic, using the essence of Smurf stolen from Smurfs in the prior film. At their birthday party for Blue, Patrick’s step-father turns up, much to his annoyance. In Paris, Gargamel reveals his plan: he wants to use the Eifel Tower to open a portal to Smurf Village, where he plans to abduct Smurfette, learn how Papa Smurf turned her blue, then turn his Naughties into Smurfs, extract their essences and rule the world. When he is unable to fit through the portal he opened, Gargamel sends Vexy and Hackus to the Smurf realm to get her. Thinking that the other Smurfs have forgotten her birthday (when, in fact, they are planning an elaborate surprise party for her), Smurfette is susceptible to Vexy’s suggestion (and friendship) and returns to Earth with her.

While Smurfette learns about the Naughties and develops a friendship with the energetic Vexy, Gargamel makes plans to transform his collection of Naughties into Smurfs so he will have an unending supply of Smurf essence. Papa Smurf selects some of the best Smurfs to join him on a trip to Earth to recover Smurfette, but magic events conspire to put him on Earth with the likes of Grouchy and Clumsy instead. When Patrick and Grace encounter Papa Smurf and his crew, they become determined to stop Gargamel, an effort that is hampered by Victor getting himself and Blue into trouble at the same time!

The Smurfs 2 is an utterly simplistic film; Smurfette’s story arc is obvious from the beginning when she believes that she has been forgotten by her entire village and they are planning a big celebration for her. She falls in with the “wrong crowd” in the form of Vexy and Hackus and her willingness to explore her “Dark Side” is curbed long before she goes into truly rebellious territory. The conflict is simplistic, as is its resolution. In fact, the only lingering thematic quality for The Smurfs 2 is that the children’s movie explores the possibility of relapse. Smurfette was created to be an evil spy for Gargamel before the love of the Smurfs changed her; in The Smurfs 2 she is fearful that she will fall back into her old behaviors.

Such complexity is entirely absent from the human characters in The Smurfs 2. Patrick has a pretty reasonable beef with Victor from his backstory, but when Victor pops up and basically forces his way into Grace and Blue’s life – and back into Patrick’s, the movie seems to endorse the action. Victor shows no respect for the carefully-balanced (if annoying) life that Patrick and Grace have (as evidenced by their respecting one of their friends’ children’s peanut allergies and Victor sending the kid to the hospital). Victor becomes the hyper-involved grandparent and the message of The Smurfs 2 seems to be that if a grandparent wants to be involved, be happy and shut up about it!

The acting in The Smurfs 2 is mediocre, at best. Brendan Gleeson appears without any of his innate charm or charisma and even Neil Patrick Harris seems remarkably flat in the role of Patrick. Of the voice talents, only Christina Ricci stands out as Vexy; the rest emote adequately at best. Ricci sounds nothing like herself as Vexy and she gives a good performance with her altered voice.

Ultimately, The Smurfs 2 is simplistic and not even worth recommending to children.

For other works with Anton Yelchin, please visit my reviews of:
Only Lovers Left Alive
Star Trek Into Darkness
Like Crazy
Terminator Salvation
Star Trek
Charlie Bartlett
15 Minutes

2/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Exactly As Droll As One Might Suspect: Maxim: The Hot 100 Disappoints

The Good: Decent photography, Good interviews
The Bad: Stupid concept, Addy, Lowbrow writing
The Basics: Maxim: The Hot 100 lives down to what one might expect of the annual magazine issue, though I was pleasantly surprised by the interviews!


One of the animated sitcoms - Family Guy, American Dad or The Simpsons has a line about Maxim that was utterly hilarious; something about their “Most Rape-able Celebrities” list. My wife recently gave me a gift subscription to Maxim, ostensibly for review and when Maxim: The Hot 100 (the annual special issue) arrived, I found myself trying to remember the joke from television about the publication. Maxim: The Hot 100 might not be quite the sinister issue that the joke insinuates, but it is pretty damn close.

Comprised of photos and a blurb for the 100 women that Maxim has decided (apparently through votes somehow) are the most desirable in the world, Maxim: The Hot 100 is like a catalog for shopping for unobtainable women. In addition to being a preposterous exercise (ranking women on their “hot” factor, as if there were a universal standard for the subjective emotion of desire), Maxim: The Hot 100 undermines itself far too frequently to be at all useful or even engaging. It’s not just some form of weird sour grapes that I write that; - favorites of mine like Anne Hathaway and Ellen Page did not make the list, but Bar Paly and Candice Swanepoel did(?!) – but any list where Katy Perry is ranked as more desirable than Sophia Vergara or Avril Lavigne ranks 44 and Anna Paquin is 78 seems skewed toward the absurd.

In addition to having a purpose that is ridiculous – are Maxim readers so stupid that they need to be told whom to be attracted to?! – and somewhat inscrutable (what are the readers supposed to do, exactly, with this information?), the Maxim: The Hot 100 special issue seems remarkably lowbrow in terms of the writing. Take, for example, the listing for Gal Gadot (who made #84 on the list) on page 13 of this year’s Maxim: The Hot 100. The blurb for Gadot reads, “Hollywood’s newest Wonder Woman is a total badass. She not only owns a motorcycle but also served two years in the Israeli army” (13). Gal Gadot is Israeli. You know who else served two years in the Israeli army? Every other Israeli citizen; it’s mandatory. Does that make her more of a badass than #39, Gina Carano, who was a MMA-brawler? Probably not. My point is that virtually none of the blurbs say anything useful, interesting or insightful about their subjects.

What keeps Maxim: The Hot 100 from the most dismal of ratings, then? First off, the photography. Most of the photos are incredibly good, exactly what one might hope for from a celebrity spankbook with a ridiculously low cover price of $3.99. The price of the magazine might make one think that it was not going to be a glossy, good-looking magazine, but apparently advertiser dollars subsidize the magazine enough that the special issue needs not charge an arm and a leg. Maxim: The Hot 100 features photographically solid pictures; in terms of color, contrast, and composition, the photographers utilized in Maxim: The Hot 100 clearly know what they are doing. In fact, because the photographers seem able and their subjects are undeniably photogenic, it is astonishing that they get some of the celebrities in remarkably unflattering looks (there’s something horrid about calling someone “hot” and smacking up a picture of them looking haggard, as at least one of the women was).

The other aspect that sells the magazine – the one that pleasantly surprised me – is the interviews. Maxim: The Hot 100 features interviews with cool celebrities (this year, it was Bryan Cranston and Nick Offerman). The questions asked of these celebrities are not the typical ones that have been asked to death and the answers are fun and informative.

Unfortunately, the two articles and a smattering of the hundreds of pictures throughout the magazine are hardly enough to justify the magazine’s existence. Several pages of the magazine are wasted debunking movie plot/effect issues (like would reversing the Earth’s direction a la Superman: The Movie turn back time). Does Maxim believe a large population of its readers are physicists who somehow slept through basic temporal mechanics? Or biology students who do not know the average size of a great white shark? Other preposterous articles focus on the latest supermodel, hot trends, and a short story about joining the mile-high club. The average length of an article in Maxim: The Hot 100 is one page, which suggests that the average reader’s attention span is ridiculously limited.

Not overflowing with impressive diction or vocabulary, Maxim: The Hot 100 is fairly ad-filled. The 120-page magazine features 22 pages of full ads (not counting the inside and back covers), along with 3 pages of partial ads and 8 pages of style articles which list all of the items in the photos, with a price (which is pretty much an advertisement to me!).

Maybe I’m not the target demographic, maybe I’m not desperately looking for unobtainable women or maybe I just don’t need a magazine to tell me what to like to have opinions. But, for those who don’t care about smart (the most common comment by women on the Maxim Hot 100 list is about their own butt; none of the quotes capture the intelligence of any of the smart women on the list), aren’t looking for a woman even close to 40 (Jennifer Lopez seems to be the most senior member of the list) and who want something more respectably portable than a hard-core magazine, Maxim: The Hot 100 is enough to entertain those who want to spend the four bucks on it.

For other magazine reviews, please visit my evaluations of:
AAA Living
Ladies’ Home Journal
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Magazine

2.5/10

For other magazine reviews, please check out my Magazine Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Same Sugarpop, Different Album: Katy Perry’s Prism Displays Disturbing Marketing Psychology!

The Good: One or two lines
The Bad: Most of the vocals are overproduced, Derivative sound, Lame rhymes, Conceptually hedges its bets.
The Basics: Katy Perry tries to reclaim her Christian Rock roots while maintaining the appearance of being a sugarpop princess who could be attainable with the awful deluxe edition of Prism.


When I reviewed the Blue October album Sway (reviewed here!), I was shocked to realize how very few new albums I had listened to and reviewed this year. Given that the end of 2013 is rapidly approaching, I figured I should make at least a passing effort to listen to some of the new works by other artists. To that end, I decided it was time to pop in the latest album by Katy Perry and with Prism, I managed to get in the Deluxe Edition right away. Unfortunately, “deluxe” or not, Prism is just plain terrible.

Potentially the biggest issue with Prism is how it is being marketed. Major publications are referring to Prism as Katy Perry’s third album. That is the type of revisionist history that Katy Perry’s production team might rely upon in order to sell the public persona of Katy Perry (“Perry” previously released a Christian rock album under her name, Katy Hudson and there exists a second, unreleased album that also precedes her breakout album as Katy Perry, One Of The Boys). The reason the production and marketing team wants Prism to be thought of as her third album is because it capitalizes on her popularity, sex appeal, and marketable image, while distancing her from the niche audience that is Christian pop/gospel music.

The problem with Prism, then, is there appears to be a clear tug of war in the content on the album between Katy’s roots and her popular image. While most of the music is synth-based pop sound, the lyrics reveal a much more conflicted view of who Katy Perry is and what kind of music she wants to have released. In fact, the album is so fractured single to single that I was shocked to discover that Perry co-wrote all of the songs on the album. The album finds itself tugging in different thematic directions with no organic evolution (in other words, this is not a concept album where the musical protagonist gets through a broken marriage). So, for example, track two is an overtly Christian anthem (despite using Eastern imagery like lotus blossoms and referencing karma, the repeated “Take me down to the river / Underneath the blood orange sun / Say my name like a scripture / Keep my heart beating like a drum” – “Legendary Lovers”) and it is followed by a track with such unambiguous sexuality it’s surprising Ke$ha didn’t have a part in its creation. Right after the church girl track, there’s the available skank that the marketing department needs to use to sell Katy Perry to the legions of teenagers, many of whom are boys who have crushes on Perry (and hey, listen to this song, it could be you! She’s available! Buy her album!). So, there is a conflict between devotion to the divine and “let’s slut it up!” [And, as an aside, it wouldn’t be “slut” if Perry’s pious alter ego weren’t affiliated with causes that were so anti-sexual liberation. The sexuality Perry presents on Prism isn’t empowered, experimental, curious, or unjudgmental; it’s just cheap.] Another weird tug-of-war on the album is a thematic conflict between songs that overtly take responsibility for the musical protagonist’s part in a failed relationship (presumably autobiographically about her failed marriage with Russell Brand) and other tracks that essentially say “it’s all your fault!” So, there’s a strange thematic conflict that does not seem to be part of normal post-marital processing, which is essentially “I accept my part in this” vs. “Blame Russell!”

With sixteen tracks clocking out at an hour, one minute and thirty-five seconds, Prism is mostly the work of Katy Perry. Perry co-wrote all of the songs and she provides the lead vocals on each and every track. Perry plays none of the instruments on the album, though she is credited as a co-producer on two of the tracks. The sheer number of collaborators in production and writing make it a legitimate question of how much of the musical vision was Perry’s and how much was Capitol Records working to churn out a hit machine like Teenage Dream.

Musically, Prism is boring. There is no growth for Perry as a musical artist between Teenage Dream and Prism. Despite her stated desire to do a very different album, songs actually sound remarkably like other works of hers. Musically, “Birthday” has the same bouncy sugarpop quality as “Last Friday Night” and the excitations in “Roar” have a broken up quality that Perry fans will recognize as familiar from “Extraterrestrial.”

Vocally, Prism doesn’t do Perry many favors, either. The engineers produce over her natural voice on almost every track. In fact, there are no shining examples of her true, unadulterated voice that stand out on Prism after listening to it eight times.

On the lyrics front, Perry may have had a great deal of help co-writing the songs, but there is insufficient evidence that any of them have genuine writing talent. On the first single, “Roar,” it is hard to take the musical protagonist seriously when, as she becomes more and more empowered, she declares that she is “dancing through the fire” (“Roar”). On your struggle to success and legitimacy, dancing is seldom the action word you’re going to want, especially if you want your obstacles to be taken seriously. One can almost hear the forthcoming “Weird Al” Yankovic parody (I’m betting it will be called “Snore”) as Perry earnestly declares, “You’re gonna hear me roar!” (“Roar”) without ever once backing it up in the song or on the album.

The bulk of Perry’s lyrics on Prism are singsongy and cliché. With lines like “Secretly, I hit the lottery / 'Cause you're brighter than all of the Northern Lights / You speak to me, even in my dreams / Wouldn't let you go for even the highest price . . . 'Cause I understand you, we see eye to eye / Like a double rainbow in the sky / And wherever you go, so will I / 'Cause a double rainbow is hard to find” (“Double Rainbow”) Perry obscures the idea that the love of which she sings is unique and interesting because all of the imagery is overly familiar.

Ultimately, the lack of growth and the thematic conflicts on the album make Prism a mess and what seems like much more of an obvious cashgrab than a legitimate musical expression. Regardless, the humability of some tunes do not justify its purchase and while this album might soar to some level of commercial success, it is impossible to believe it will be one of the defining albums of this (or any) generation.

The best track is “This Moment” (though it is, lyrically, a cheap retread of “Fireworks”), most of the rest of the album is in a horse race for worst track, though I found “Birthday”’s vile qualities worse than “Legendary Lovers’” pandering to the base.

For other works by and about Katy Perry, be sure to visit:
Why “I Kissed A Girl” Is Utterly Demeaning And Homophobic
One Of The Boys
Katy Perry Unplugged
One Of The Boys (2009 reissue)
Teenage Dream

1/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Katy Perry's Ridiculous Remix "Single" For "UR So Gay."

The Good: ? It's short?
The Bad: Short, Lame remixes, Horrendous lyrics, Terribly repetitive, Unimaginative.
The Basics: Shocking the world with the word "penis" on her single, "UR So Gay" is an insulting, rage-filled single remixed far too many times for anyone who likes quality music.


When it comes to flash-in-the-pan musical artists, there have been few in recent times I have hoped would take a dive the way I hope Katy Perry might. When Perry hit it big with "I Kissed A Girl," I did a lyrical analysis to try to expose her for exactly what she was saying. Nevertheless, her debut album One Of The Boys has continued to sell remarkably well after a few years and Perry still has the ability to get on magazine covers.

No song from her first album is arguably more offensive than "UR So Gay," a song which almost immediately led to a backlash in the LGBT community and led Perry to issue one of the most lame backpedals in contemporary pop music. As a c.d. single, "UR So Gay" is the album cut of the song with 4 remixes of the song and the track "Use Your Love." This is immediately problematic because "UR So Gay" was incredibly overproduced to begin with, so the remixes take a track which was already worked over to the point of sounding unnatural and pushes the pop envelope beyond anything sounding human.

"UR So Gay" is a railing from a female protagonist against a boy who is too effeminate for her. Using "gay" as an insult, Perry sings "I hope you hang yourself with your H&M scarf / While jacking off listening to Mozart / You b!tch and moan about L.A. / Wishing you were in the rain reading Hemingway / You don't eat meat / And drive electrical cars ... You need SPF 45 just to stay alive / You're so gay and you don't even like boys" and the best defense she has is that she is not using "gay" as "homosexual."

It's hard for anyone not to listen to this song and feel insulted, even her audience - which, one assumes, she figures wasn't smart enough to know what "fey" meant when she wrote the song, which would have allowed her to use that instead of "gay." The song is repetitive with the title and adjacent line being repeated over thirty times in the explicit versions (more in the first remix). In fact, the most enjoyable portion of the EP are tracks four and five, which strips away the banal and insulting lyrics and plays two different instrumental only versions.

"UR So Gay" in all of its incarnations is a very obvious pop song with loud guitars, thumping drums and excessive keyboards. Perry's vocals are so produced as to make it questionable how many times she actually sings any of the lyrics and wonder how many times they just looped her vocals. The overproduced instrumental pop-dance sound only gets worse when looped, as it is on the first remix and final one.

Broken up only by the equally singsong and overproduced "Use Your Love," the "UR So Gay" single may safely be avoided by anyone looking for good music.

For other works by and about Katy Perry, be sure to visit:
Why “I Kissed A Girl” Is Utterly Demeaning And Homophobic
One Of The Boys
Katy Perry Unplugged
One Of The Boys (2009 reissue)
Teenage Dream

0/10

For other music reviews, be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page!

© 2012, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Waste Of A Second Disc, The 2009 Reissue Of One Of The Boys Flops Entirely!

The Good: The original album isn't all bad/Perry wrote some of her own material
The Bad: Second disc adds nothing substantive, A LOT of repetition, Doesn't include prior bonus tracks.
The Basics: Katy Perry takes two of her biggest hits and loads a c.d. up with remixes of them in order to try to sell more copies of One Of The Boys.


I am usually a pretty strong advocate for the idea that more is better. Much like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry recently reissued her breakout album with a limited amount of bonus material on a second disc. Unlike Lady Gaga's attempt to capitalize on (mostly) the same material she already released, Perry's 2009 re-release of her 2008 album One Of The Boys (reviewed here!) includes a bonus disc comprised only of remixes and it takes an already mediocre album and makes it unbuyable.

The 2009 reissue of One Of The Boys contains the original mainstream pressing on that album with absolutely no changes. The twelve tracks are the exact same ones which appeared the first time, including "Waking Up In Vegas." The only difference is the bonus c.d. and it's one of the lamest incentive discs I have ever heard.

With eight tracks with just over half an hour of music, the bonus disc is simply four remixes each of "I Kissed A Girl" and "Hot N Cold." Perry does not release any additional or new songs and her creative influence over the remixes (she co-wrote both original songs) is minimal as they are simply re-engineered versions of the songs under the hands of other producers and DJs.

The four remixes of "I Kissed A Girl," which include remixes by Dr. Luke & Blanco (who engineered the original album), The Knocks, Norman & Atalla, and Morgain Paige are nothing short of insipid, repetitive remixes that take already mediocre source material and rearrange them in an even more banal way. The Knocks remix the song to have more of a rock emphasis (highlighting electric guitars), the first remix is more dance with a more pounding bassline and emphasis on the synths, and the other two take the ballad and make it into a repetitive dance track which samples itself incessantly.

Unfortunately, while the Morgan Paige remix of "I Kissed A Girl" manages to sound occasionally fresh, the same cannot be said about any of the four versions of "Hot N Cold." Already singsong and repetitive, not one of the producer/DJs - InnerPartySystem, Bimbo Jones, Manhattan Clique, or Yelle - does anything remotely fresh with the song. Instead, they homogeneously pump up the bass, repeat the inane chorus even more times than the original and make an already overbearing dance track more mind-numbingly dull.

The thing is, in doing press for One Of The Boys, Perry claimed to have written about sixty-five songs, which would have made for more than enough material for b-sides and a true bonus disc. None of that original content appears on the reissue, so fans looking for something fresh or actually creative will be disappointed. Even worse, the bonus tracks which appeared on the iTunes and WalMart exclusive versions of One Of The Boys are absent on this pressing.

Shameless.

For other works by and about Katy Perry, be sure to visit:
Why “I Kissed A Girl” Is Utterly Demeaning And Homophobic
Katy Perry Unplugged
Teenage Dream

1/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Not Nearly As Clever As It Is Derivative, One Of The Boys By Katy Perry.

The Good: Some catchy tunes, The songs ARE Katy Perry's musical vision
The Bad: Short, Banal, Musically and vocally derivative, Repetitive, Message is buried pretty effectively
The Basics: A disturbingly blase pop-rock album, One Of The Boys sounds like works by other, better, musical artists and foreshadows a short career for Katy Perry.


As one who listens to a lot of music, I am very cautious about what I buy, getting most of my music out from the library first and then - when I know I like an album - purchasing it. In fact, last year, my music collection only grew by a whopping three compact discs (well, five, because two were two-disc sets, but you get the picture). It takes a lot these days to get me to invest in music and I listen and truly hear the albums before I buy, which sets me apart from a lot of listeners and reviewers who either buy everything a certain artist puts out, buys within a genre or is easily hooked on a well-produced beat and melody. Not me.

As such, I've come to (I hope) recognize a real flash-in-the-pan musical artist and Katy Perry certainly qualifies. Last year, I wrote an article decrying the subversive messages within Perry's hit "I Kissed A Girl" (see the link at the bottom), so when considering her album One Of The Boys, which I have finally managed to get in, I'll pretty much neglect the hit that made her. However, the critique of that single song remains remarkably true throughout an evaluation of the rest of the album. Katy Perry on One Of The Boys is not some new rebel who stands to corrupt young people and send them running from the loving embrace of family and authority; she is a wannabe Christian rock star who released a pop message that sounds catchy, but virtually every song upholds very traditional, middle class, heterosexual (and homophobic, despite Perry's backtracking), Christian values. Outside a song that uses suicide as a metaphor for the death of a relationship and the way Perry delivers her startlingly reactionary message, One Of The Boys is arguably one of the least objectionable ways parents can go about keeping their teens interested in all of the traditional, girlish things if keeping them in such a mold is what they truly want. I keep my focus on the teens because beyond that demographic, I cannot figure who would want such a blandly derivative pop-rock album, nor who else might be swindled by the flash as opposed to the substance of Perry's message on One Of The Boys.

With a dozen tracks, clocking out at 43:52, One Of The Boys is astonishingly very much the musical vision of Katy Perry. Perry provides all of the lead vocals, though many times they are so overproduced that a human voice is hardly recognizable. She wrote three of the songs and co-wrote the remaining nine, so the statements on the album are at least peripherally what she wants them to be. She even plays the whistle on "UR So Gay" and the piano on "I'm Still Breathing." She is credited as a co-producer on a single song, but that's all. Even so, she exhibits a remarkable amount of control over the message and delivery of her album (which, it is worth noting, is not her debut).

The problems with One Of The Boys, though, start with the song titles and work their way down through all levels of the song. The opening track, One Of The Boys, is actually about how the musical protagonist does not want to be considered one of the boys anymore, just as "I Kissed A Girl" sounds fun and titillating, but if one listens to the substance of the song, they quickly realize that it's promoting the idea that "it's just a phase" or an "experiment." Even "Waking Up In Vegas" promotes the idea that there are consequences to dumb underage drinking experiments. In other words, outside a single listen to the sound of the album, listeners will find that One Of The Boys promotes a very droll message of social orthodoxy.

As for the sound of the album, here is where a seasoned ear can gladly go on about how little value there is in One Of The Boys, if for no other reason than it is almost entirely derivative. Have you ever heard of Maria Mena? She is generally regarded as a one-hit wonder for her song "You're The Only One" and her debut was actually quite promising. Perry's songs "Thinking Of You" and "Mannequin" are so derivative of Mena's works that her tunes actually sound like she lifted whole musical phrases from them! Perry does not have an original sounding song on the album, which is probably why I spent a year thinking that "Waking Up In Vegas" was a Kelly Clarkson song. The reason behind this is that Katy Perry seems to be a vocal chameleon, much the way Jim Carrey is an acting chameleon. Perry has a decent vocal range, but when it comes to singing her songs, she puts them out with emotional emphasis and even singing patterns that sound familiar because they are virtually identical to already-established artists, from the more obscure Maria Mena to mainstream artists like Avril Lavigne.

Part of the problem with One Of The Boys, though, comes from the fact that the songs are musically derivative or overproduced as well. This album is very much the typical pop-rock album and one suspects part of its success comes from it being the only player in a dying niche (listening to a Top 40 station is like listening to some weird hybrid of Country and Hip-Hop these days). But Perry's producers - who create the music more often than not on a mixing board than with live performers - have created pop-rock which is the most obvious form of it. Virtually every song tries to have a hook and capture the listener with a catchy beat, throbbing bassline and the use of repetition. Listening to "I Kissed A Girl," it is easy to pick out the percussive emphasis that made "Rock 'N Roll" (Part 1) so famous. While most of the songs do not sound directly like other songs (save those two which sound frighteningly like Maria Mena's works), the album has a very generic, plastic, mass-produced pop-rock sound to it that makes it hold up poorly over multiple listens.

As for the lyrics, here the album is tragically unimpressive. The tracks generally do trend toward the surprisingly conservative by making the listener think that they are listening to something deviant or rebellious through the use of guitars or inflammatory titles like "I Kissed A Girl," but listening to the lyrics, One Of The Boys upholds traditional values of femininity, subservience to the male norms, consequences for reckless behaviors, and use of "gay" as a pejorative. In fact, I thought that "If You Can Afford Me" sounded strangely whorish of Perry with its lines "If you want me you're gonna have to break the bank, tonight. / Cause some don't have the patience, some call me high-maintenance / But you pay the bill, cause, that's the deal. / If you wanna ride, just name your price don't play cheap, with your heart / Don't make a bet if you can't write the check, for me, for me. / Cause I can be bought, but you'll pay the cost / If you can afford me" until I considered that what the song is actually doing is reinforcing the idea that the man in the relationship should be the provider and take care of the woman without any sense of economic equality in the relationship. I mean, to reject the notion that there's something deeper going on in the song is just to accept that Perry is singing about getting sex for money and that seems unlikely from a young woman who is upholding other, more obvious, traditional values.

This is not to say the album is not without any treats. Perry manages to actually create a memorable storysong with the album's title track. When she sings "So over the summer / Something changed / I started reading 17 / And shaving my legs / And I study / Lolita religiously / And I walked / Right into school / And caught you / Staring at me" (One Of The Boys) she does so clearly and she creates an empathetic musical protagonist who is fun and brassy. She opens the album well and it is very easy to listen to the album because generally she does articulate well.

It is also easy to listen to One Of The Boys because the lyrics are repeated so very many times that one would have to be pretty braindead after listening to the album once to not be able to pick out at least half of the album titles simply because they are the most repeated lines on the work. In addition to a high sense of repetition, One Of The Boys features songs that have generally predictable rhyme schemes. On some of her better songs, she guts the emotional intensity of the lines through rhymes which are depressingly obvious, like "I can't stop, don't care if I lose / Baby you are the weapon I choose / These wounds are self inflicted / I'm going down *in flames* for you / Baby you are the weapon I choose / These wounds are self inflicted / One more thing I'm addicted too" (“Self Inflicted”).

Instead of being fresh and different, One Of The Boys sounds like pop-rock music we've heard before, because we have heard this before. A lot. It makes it very easy to pass this one by, regardless of how catchy it initially seems.

The best song is "I'm Still Breathing," the low point is "UR So Gay."

For other works by and about Katy Perry, be sure to visit:
Why “I Kissed A Girl” Is Utterly Demeaning And Homophobic
Katy Perry Unplugged
Teenage Dream

3.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized list of all the albums and singles I have reviewed!

© 2012, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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On Katy Perry's Unplugged One Doesn't Need Many Words To Pan These Two Discs!

The Good: Well, the alternate versions of “Thinking Of You” and “Lost” aren’t terrible.
The Bad: Short, Video adds nothing substantive to the presentation, Songs are still largely banal pop
The Basics: A c.d. and DVD from Katy Perry’s MTV performance on Unplugged, Perry tries to milk her album’s hits with acoustic versions and a video which are not at all indispensible.


Following my spinning of Teenage Dream (reviewed here!), I continue to get in more works by Katy Perry, who is possibly one of the whitest artists on the market right now. This is never more clear than it is on MTV’s new two-disc set Katy Perry Unplugged. If Perry seems like an odd choice for Unplugged, getting the discs will not clear up the oddity; musically and visually, she is a strange choice for the acoustic performance show.

With only seven songs on the c.d., Unplugged is Katy Perry singing five of her songs from her smash album One Of The Boys along with the Fountains Of Wayne song “Hackensack” and her new song “Brick By Brick.” To her credit, Perry co-wrote all but “Hackensack” and she performs the lead vocals on all of the songs. She even plays her guitar on some of the songs. Still, this is an anemic use of the medium as the music only half an hour of the c.d.s capacity.

Stripped of severe production elements, Katy Perry’s pop hits are presented as mild, less throbbing songs which are simply banal pop numbers as opposed to annoying pop-dance songs. Perry is backed by guitars, bass and mild drumming and she makes “I Kissed A Girl” more of a jazz song than the pop version virtually everyone has heard. “UR So Gay” is a muted acoustic song in this incarnation that is so dull, Perry sounds like she is sleepsinging it. In fact, it is only on the songs “Thinking Of You” which she presents as a soulful pop ballad and “Lost” where she stumbles through with a bit of wistful loss she barely emotes in this live performance. In fact, “Lost” sounds more like a musical lecture than it does a pop song.

Most of Perry’s songs are hampered by poor writing. Songs are repetitive “(UR So Gay”) or have very predictable rhyme schemes (“Brick By Brick”). She even manages to sap the energy out of “Waking Up In Vegas.”

Katy Perry Unplugged comes with a second disc, a DVD which features all seven tracks being performed on the MTV show and an interview with Perry. The interview is unenlightening and offers no real insight into the performer or her process. Before each track for the concert, Perry introduces the songs and her introductions vary from barely articulate ramblings (“Lost”) to self-referential plugging (“I Kissed A Girl”). She does not satisfactorily explain how someone billing herself as a faith-based good girl could do what the musical protagonist of “Thinking Of You” does.

Ultimately, fans will be unimpressed seeing a crowd more active than Perry is on stage and musically, this is not enough of an improvement over her produced stuff to warrant buying.

For other female artists, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
300 Days At Sea - Heather Nova
The Best Damn Thing - Avril Lavigne
21 - Adele

2.5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Why Liberals, L/G/B-Friendly Folks, And Adults Ought To Cringe At Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl"

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The Basics: Far from being an anthem for lesbian, gay and bisexual culture, Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" is another fear-inspired argument to avoid drinking.


The so-called "Culture Wars" in the United States are a veritable mine field of contradictory messages and demands that trade upon such twisted leaps of logic that make one wonder how anyone subscribes to the positions of either side. Perhaps the defining arguments of the conflicts for the "soul" of America was best defined on an episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (reviewed here!) entitled "Nevada Day, Part 1" wherein the character of Matthew Albie (Matthew Perry) defines the fight as ". . . your side hates my side because you think we think you're stupid and my side hates your side because we think you're stupid." The thing is, the "Culture Wars," like many fights, are fought on many fronts.

Perhaps the clearest front the "Culture Wars" are fought on is popular media: movies, television, books, and - of course - popular music. The culturally conservative elements recently launched an offensive in the conflict for the "soul" of America by attempting a mass crossover of Christian Rock into pop-rock. This was done when bands like Lifehouse released radio-friendly, universally-accepted, pop-rock songs to promote their album No Name Face (reviewed here!), which included "Hanging By A Moment" (their big mainstream hit song) along side more traditional and obvious Christian Rock tracks. The other side of the "Culture Wars" easily exposed this as a somewhat insidious way of operating. The argument held that if Christian Rock truly wanted to be a legitimate mainstream success and dominate pop music airwaves, they needed to be straightforward about it. In other words, if those who support Christian Rock and the dogma usually associated with it, they ought to be trying to break into the mainstream with their songs about god, Jesus and whatever agenda they are promoting as opposed to a thematic bait-and-switch between the radio singles and the content on the albums.

A far less-clear offensive has recently been launched by (former?) Christian Rock artist Katy Perry. Katy Perry's first album, "Katy Hudson" was released on the Christian Rock label, Red Hill Records back in 2001. But for all the apparent controversy about the lead single from her album, One Of The Boys, "I Kissed A Girl" is a shockingly straightforward track for the anti-feminists. In fact, it is somewhat surprising that there are any within the gay, lesbian, and bisexual community who continue to support Perry's career based upon how direct and offensive the lyrics to "I Kissed A Girl" are to anyone who actually pays attention to the lines being sung.

Even more amusing than the lack of outrage among the liberals who need only pay attention to the lyrics to realize that this is not a positive song in terms of message or content, the more conservative elements that might be on the surface offended by the obvious content seem to be missing the rhetorical boat as well. Underneath the thin shell that appears gay friendly is a stronger disregard for responsibility and an argument for a young, dumb experimentalism that is almost antithetical to the conservative agenda that might applaud the subtle mockery of l/g/b culture "I Kissed A Girl" stands for. As mentioned; sometimes the convolutions in these "Culture Wars" leave one wondering just where someone or their art stands.

Like other musical offensives in the "Culture Wars," "I Kissed A Girl" features a fairly infectious pop tune, guided by electric guitars, synthesizers, and a drum beat that makes it easy for the 12 - 21 target demographic to dance to. Score one for the conservatives: they lay down a beat on "I Kissed A Girl" that is legitimate teen pop-rock trash of the most blase and obvious sound.

How is "I Kissed A Girl" negative toward lesbian and gay culture? Let's look at the lyrics. Perhaps most striking in the song is the line "It's not what good girls do, not how they should behave." This resurrects the tired old idea that good girls are heterosexual and that there is a right and wrong way to behave and, implicitly, to think. Good girls, after all, don't even think of kissing other girls. This is pretty much a classical view that the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s strove to do away with. Women who are quiet and demur and make for "the ideal wife" are not necessarily better or more desirable than the women who speak their mind, experiment, and, yes, even kiss a girl or two in their time.

The situation by which the musical protagonist of "I Kissed A Girl" has her supposed lesbian (or bi-curious) encounter is treated as accidental by the opening lines of "This was never the way I planned, not my intention. / I got so brave, drink in hand, lost my discretion." How do good girls "go bad?" They drink! Drinking leads to lesbian kisses! Avoid alcohol or you, too, might kiss a girl! This straightforward premise allows the musical protagonist to be absolved all of her sins henceforth: she didn't mean to kiss a girl, she was just too drunk to know better. This is supported some by the subsequent lines "It's not what I'm used to, just wanna try you on. / I'm curious for you, caught my attention." This young woman is so drunk you could essentially dangle a shiny object in front of her, she has become so curious by what is in front of her. Score another point for the Conservative agenda.

A look at the catchy refrain reveals the serious stumbling block for both sides in the Culture Wars, though. After one of the two decent lines in the song about enjoying the taste of another girl's Chapstick, Perry sings "I kissed a girl just to try it, / I hope my boyfriend don't mind it." Perry's musical protagonist (it ought to be noted that Perry is the co-writer of this song with Max Martin, Dr. Luke, and Cathy Dennis) uses this line to make clear: 1. She has a boyfriend, 2. She is accountable to the boyfriend, and 3. This is not something intended to be repeated. First, that the musical protagonist is heterosexual is used to absolve her from the "sin" of kissing a girl. Second, worrying about the boyfriend minding it indicates that the singer both knew it was wrong (or suspect) and she feels some remorse for the action. Good girls repent to their boyfriend and ask forgiveness. Because it is "just something she tried," there is the implication that boyfriend won't mind it, will forgive her and they can both go back to their heterosexual bliss.

What the line more effectively does, however, is promote the ever-growing irresponsible experimentation in youth culture. To be clear: the role of teenagers is to test boundaries. They try to figure out how far they can go and what works for them by pushing everyone and every institution around them. Experimentation is a normal part of growing up, be it heterosexual, homosexual, or multiple partner sexual activities, drug use, etc. The fundamental problem with youth culture in general is when it fails to learn from those experiences and most importantly to take responsibility for them. As the old adage goes: the crime is bad, the cover-up is worse. In the case of "I Kissed A Girl," what makes the musical protagonist so deplorable to a thinking feminist is that she does not own her experience. She feels guilty about cheating on her boyfriend, even as she lauds the experience. The closest she comes to making a worthwhile statement in this is that she does feel some remorse. The problem is, she doesn't take responsibility for the action. After all, she was drunk at the time. Moreover, this experience did not come up as part of her relationship with boyfriend, but rather in defiance of it. She violated the terms of the relationship (if they had spoken about it beforehand and decided as a couple that girlfriend was going to go out, get drunk and kiss girls, one assumes boyfriend wouldn't have rational grounds to "mind it," even if the emotional reality of the situation did not match the plan), after all, it wasn't planned. The lack of responsibility might well be the common ground between conservatives and liberals in denouncing the song.

But the way that "I Kissed A Girl" truly panders to the conservative base comes in the next lines "It felt so wrong, / it felt so right. / Don't mean I'm in love tonight." Right away, the reaction is, it feels wrong. And while true feminists might wish that the reason it feels wrong is that this is a drunk woman cheating on her boyfriend, there is nothing in the lyrics to indicate that. And while part of it feels right, it is important for the musical protagonist to note that there is no love here. There is no "danger," therefore, of the good girl staying bad. She'll be fine when she sobers up in the morning! One supposes it's only sober girls who are at risk of being "turned gay" by the attentions of lesbians and gays.

But what is most offensive is the casual disregard the musical protagonist has for her subject. Instantly remorseful to boyfriend, she tosses aside "the girl" with the lines "I don't even know your name, it doesn't matter. / You're my experimental game, just human nature." "The girl" isn't person, she is a game. As uncouth as it is to cite one's own works, in Within These Walls, this type scenario is explored when the protagonist, Jen, has her first sexual experience with a young woman, who was doing it simply as an experiment. In that work, it becomes clear how much such casual disregard can seriously damage young women. Just like boys who simply set out to "score" with girls - one need only recall that particularly despicable gang that awarded its members points for deflowering virgins - girls who try to make it with the local lesbians just for fun indicate a callousness that is far more destructive than healthy or normal.

A young woman kissing another is not a big deal, especially as part of normal, youthful exploration. Having to couch it in drunken, irresponsible teenage behavior undermines any potential benefit to the liberals of a song like "I Kissed A Girl." The sooner liberals expose this type of insidious argument in the form of pop music, the sooner we might pave the way for a truly progressive one where it's treated as normal and loving for a young woman to kiss a girl, enjoy it, fall in love and grow from it. It sure beats being discarded after a night of a drunken heterosexual experimentation, which is - in the end - all "I Kissed A Girl" is truly advocating.

For other essays or commentary, please be sure to check out:
Anne Hathaway For Wonder Woman!
How To Read The Blackest Night Saga

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Teenagers Are Dumb: The Legacy Of Katy Perry's Teenage Dream

The Good: Themes on three songs are worthwhile.
The Bad: Vocals, Lyrics, Most of the music, Thematically mindnumbing.
The Basics: Katy Perry's album Teenage Dream highlights how bad music from the current class of pop divas can get and illustrates a lifestyle devoid of responsibility, thought or any sense of personality.


The other day when I reviewed the Avril Lavigne album Goodbye Lullaby (that's here!), I offended some of my readers by calling the album thematically whorish and comparing Lavigne's style direction to Katy Perry. I'd like to take a moment, here at the beginning of my review of Perry's latest auditory travesty to clarify, not retract. I believe everyone is fine to follow their own path, so long as it does not harm others, and I do not subscribe to any Puritanical notions of sex or sexuality. But, having been involved with a younger person who left me because they were "at the age when they are supposed to go out and make mistakes, be promiscuous and stupid" after getting me to trust them, I am wary of young people. The idea that there are no consequences for saying what you want to get what you want and then discarding people when you're ready, justifying it as "age appropriate" does not sit well with me. Instead, it is a lack of responsibility, it does hurt others and most of all, it is cheap. So, when I write that I am disappointed that Avril Lavigne thematically mimics Katy Perry and created an album that is whorish, I'm not judging the sexual looseness as much as I am condemning the "I want to be young and dumb" attitude that encourages people to get drunk and/or high and have sex, glorifying not remembering whom one is with at the time. That is whorish and it is beneath Avril Lavigne.

With Teenage Dream, I am not surprised. On it, Katy Perry once again illustrates that she is cheap. Or, to be accurate, the professional persona in the music of Katy Perry is cheap and disturbingly insubstantial.

With fourteen tracks (twelve songs and two remixes of songs that appear early on the album) clocking out at 58:31, Teenage Dream is an ode to youthful stupidity and the blame rests largely with Perry herself. All twelve of the songs were cowritten by Katy Perry, though she was not involved in the production of the album. The lead vocals are all by Katy Perry, though she does not play any instruments on the album. Even so, if Perry is not calling the shots for the album's direction, she is allowing it to happen and Teenage Dream appears to be an album she is happy with, even a year later as the fifth single from it appears on the radio.

Musically, Teenage Dream is as assembled as the persona of Katy Perry is. The music is all synths, drums, guitar sounds. It is a sugary dance-pop album that sounds like it is trying to get people to dance . . . and it is. Similarly, Katy Perry's vocals are frequently inorganic and overproduced to the point that there is little of a human voice on the album. Instead, Perry's voice - while she articulates all of her lyrics so 95% of them can be easily understood (or repeats them enough so that only someone who is not paying any attention will miss what she is saying) - is so altered as to sound mechanical at points and the result is that much of the music and vocals blends to sound created or assembled. It's like looking for something that tastes like an actual food in a meal made of chemicals.

Katy Perry's vocal style is characterized by breaking words up. She makes staccato stops mid-word and this breaks up her otherwise fluid vocals, making the sound of her lines sound even less human, realistic or sensible. Sadly, the broken sound of Perry singing only makes her seem less mature, which is pretty terrible considering thematically Perry is exceptionally immature on Teenage Dream.

And Perry comes across as ridiculous when she is not sounding so immature as to make any sensible adult cringe. With storysongs about getting drunk and having blackout sex and an eagerness to repeat the same, Perry is hard to listen to and enjoy for anyone with adult sensibilities. While pop music is often oriented toward young people, Perry seems on top of the "young and dumb" demographic with lines like "Last Friday night / We went streaking in the park / Skinny dipping in the dark / Then had a ménage à trois / Last Friday night / Yeah I think we broke the law / Always say we're gonna stop / Whoa-oh-oah / This Friday night / Do it all again" ("Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)"). The whole idea of getting drunk repeatedly to have sex is . . . well, young and dumb, utterly irresponsible. It's not enjoyable to listen to, despite the simple beat and up and down music that defines the song.

My wife is a fan of the song "Fireworks" and I have to admit the most pleasant surprise on Teenage Dream was discovering that the inspirational message of "Fireworks" was not alone. The song encourages people to be strong and grow and while the vocals are done better by the warblers on Glee, "Fireworks" is not the only song that tries to motivate the audience when it isn't glorifying nudity, dumb sex and intoxication. I was excited to hear Perry sing "You fall asleep during foreplay / 'Cause the pills you take are more your forte / I'm not sticking around to watch you go down / Wanna be your lover / Not your fuckin' mother / Can't be your saviour / I don't have the power / I'm not gonna stay and watch you circle the drain" ("Circle The Drain").

Sadly, though, "Fireworks," "Circle The Drain," and "The One That Got Away" are the exceptions to the rule. The rule are repetitive, ridiculous songs like Perry's ode to checking out a man's penis with "Peacock." Destined to never be on the radio, the song "Peacock" repeats over and over again, "Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock? / Don't be a chicken boy, stop acting like a beeotch / I'ma peace out if you don't give me the pay off / Come on baby let me see / What you're hiding underneath / Are you brave enough to let me see your peacock" ("Peacock")?

Ultimately, Teenage Dream is boring after the first few listens because the songs are so dramatically lowbrow. Were it not for the three thematically sensible songs, this lemon would be an absolute zero.

For other works by female artists, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Timbre - Sophie B. Hawkins
300 Days At Sea - Heather Nova
Come On Over - Shania Twain

2/10

For other music reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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"Blah, Blah, Blah Blah Blah Blah," The Smurfs Is Just Horrendous.

The Good: Hank Azaria and Neil Patrick Harris show up for it . . .
The Bad: Not funny, Not charming, Dull plot, No character development, Terrible special effects, Virtually everything.
The Basics: Entirely underwhelming, The Smurfs is not worth seeing for adults or children, giving it little to no redeeming value during a bloated Summer Blockbuster Season.


One of the nice things about being a reviewer is getting into preview screenings. Unfortunately, many of them are public screenings intended to generate word of mouth and it was one such screening I found myself at yesterday morning for The Smurfs. And it's not like my wife didn't warn me the place would be overrun with screaming children (which it was), but as she correctly guessed, I just can't get enough of panning the works of Katy Perry. The truth is, my disdain for the works of Katy Perry would have been reason for me to brave seeing The Smurfs eventually, but it was my appreciation of the works of Neil Patrick Harris that made me want to see the movie early and go when the place was packed with kids.

Sadly, Neil Patrick Harris and Hank Azaria appearing in the movie is not enough to override the overwhelming sense of suck that this movie possesses.

The Smurfs suffers not from being what it is - which is family-friendly fare - but from being the most mundane, senseless version of what it is supposed to be. There is no message, no strong moral, not even a sense of nostalgia for those of us who grew up on the Smurfs. Yes, despite going into the movie suspecting it would disappoint, I had a secret hope that this would remind me of something simple that I did love as a child, but instead, The Smurfs completely underwhelmed me and left me, if possible, more cynical than ever. And Katy Perry was not the cause of it, which might be the first time I can use the phrases "more cynical" and "not Katy Perry's fault" together. Instead, The Smurfs is a prolonged slapstick chase sequence connected by humor that didn't even seem to grab the under ten crowd that dominated the screening I was at.

The Smurfs are living in peace in their village when the evil sorcerer Gargamel invades to try to capture Smurfs for his nefarious purposes. Fleeing Gargamel, six of the Smurfs - including Papa, Smurfette and Brainy - fall through a portal into New York's Central Park. Their feelings of safety and familiarity are upset when they see the giant buildings and are chased by Gargamel and his cat, Azrael. As the Smurfs try to find safety, they end up in the possession of Patrick Winslow, who is fairly cynical and unappreciative of the magical beings.

Encouraged by his wife Grace, Patrick tries to keep the Smurfs safe and help them return to their village. But soon, the Smurfs and Patrick must work together to stop Gargamel when Papa Smurf is captured by the wizard.

I'm going to start my critique with the most mundane of criticisms of The Smurfs because someone has to say it. The Smurfs in The Smurfs are not three apples high. Right off the bat, there is a huge perspective problem with The Smurfs that will upset purists and make the project seem like it was put together by people who couldn't tell the difference between an apple and a crab apple. Besides that, the best special effect in The Smurfs truly is the make-up that transforms Hank Azaria into Gargamel. Between the make-up, his voice and the goofy sense of movement Azaria has to make him embody Gargamel, Azaria is utterly unrecognizable, even to fans of his work.

The Smurfs suffers because the plot is almost nonexistent and the character development is entirely absent from the piece. The plot is a pretty basic chase movie with Gargamel being a pretty absolute evil character whose motivations are not explored and instead is the Villain For The Sake Of A Villain. The Smurfs are, conversely, good, even Grouchy who lives up to his name by being the contrarian of the lot. The chase from Gargamel is broken up by quieter bits that have Grace and Patrick learn more about the Smurfs as they are subjected to pretty banal humor, usually involving the fact that the Smurfs are so small interacting with the human-sized world and accessories therein.

The Smurfs are characterized by their names. Papa is an old leader, Chef cooks, Clumsy falls down, Smurfette is a girl, Brainy spouts facts and ideas constantly, you get the picture. Beyond their names and the lone trait they embody, the Smurfs are virtually identical. Physically, they look the same with their white hats and white pants, save Smurfette who wears a dress, Papa who wears red, Brainy who wears glasses, and Gutsy, who wears a kilt. The lesson of The Smurfs is, ostensibly, that people need to work together to get things done. So, Brainy is not nearly as useful without Hefty or Gutsy because it is one thing to be smart, but it is another to be able to put a plan into action with strength or stones. We get it. Unfortunately, the children in the audience did not seem to care much about the social message because they were overwhelmed by the CG Smurfs that look utterly fake in the real environments. Moreover, the moral of the Smurf lifestyle is comparatively underemphasized in the film in favor of chase sequences and ridiculously bad puns that are supposed to pass for humor.

As for the acting, Hank Azaria carries his scenes, but the others, including a surprisingly flat Neil Patrick Harris, do not. Harris and Jayma Mays do an excellent job of keeping their eyelines proper for the virtual characters, but Harris has a lack of spark uncharacteristic to his performances. So, while he makes humorous gripes that nitpickers of the Smurfs will appreciate, he does it without any particular zest or irony, as if he doesn't want to upset his mealticket by buying into his lines. Jayma Mays, conversely, plays yet another dew-eyed optimist who gives us nothing we haven't seen from her before. The voice actors all do fine as their characters, including Katy Perry, though none of them are given real voice challenges that warrant their celebrity. Indeed, some of the celebrity is distracting. Each time Grouchy opened his mouth, I was aware I was listening to George Lopez.

Ultimately, The Smurfs is mundane and it is not entertaining to add buoyancy to that averageness, which sinks it further. I suppose not every property from the 1980s is marketable today with CG effects and a tongue-in-cheek attitude to it. Still, I'd pay to see a good Masters Of The Universe flick. I would not pay to see this and cannot recommend anyone else pay for it or even waste their time on it when seeing it is free.

For other works featuring George Lopez, be sure to visit my reviews of:
Marmaduke
Valentine's Day
The Spy Next Door
Swing Vote

1.5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page on the subject by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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