Metacritic reviews

This is a film that transcends "good" or "bad," "like" or "don't like."

I deferred to the wisdom of Grouchy Smurf (George Lopez): "I didn't hate it as much as I expected to. But I still hated it."

The slapstick is very small-kid friendly and even the most adult-friendly jokes are pretty mild stuff.

Adorable and annoying, patently unnecessary yet kinda sweet, it's a calculated commercial enterprise with little soul but an appreciable amount of heart.

The bottom line: Any movie that gives Jonathan Winters work is doing something right.

For all the digitally enhanced Smurfness, the results are remarkably mirthless.

Like the show, this boring, lazy, clumsily staged, overly lit, unnecessarily 3D-ed contraption even culminates with some half-hearted moral hectoring-in this case, the togetherness of the Smurfs works to validate heteronormative values.

The Smurfs may be blue, but their movie is decidedly green, recycling discarded bits from other celluloid Happy Meals like "Alvin and the Chipmunks," "Garfield," and "Hop" into something half animated, half live action, and all careful studio calculation.

Actual kids may find this fun, but for adults, watching The Smurfs may feel a little too much like trying to wrangle an overcrowded kiddie birthday party.

What the kids at my screening seemed to like best was the wizard's cat, whose mouth is computer-manipulated to utter pithy asides.