The Smurfs are not as funny as I once believed they were and SpongeBob is falling as well.
The Lowdown
I grew up with The Smurfs. I loved the show from as far back as I can remember. I still own a lot of the glasses from Hardees I bought over twenty years ago. Yet when I put in this Smurfs DVD I realized the show has not aged well. Of course, the actual DVD wasn’t remastered and the visual look is as weathered as the show itself. It is further proof the shows you loved as a kid are rarely as good as you remember.
The DVD includes five episodes, “The Last Laugh,” “The A-maze-ing Smurfs,” “The Lost City of Yore,” “Johan’s Army,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Smurfy.” Watching these episodes I don’t see how I enjoyed it as a kid and I don’t think that kids today will enjoy it either. If nothing else, the episodes annoyed me, especially “The Last Laugh” which cursed a number of Smurfs to just laugh nonstop. I wanted to enjoy the show with my son but I couldn’t get into it.
I want to point out I am sure there were enjoyable Smurf tales from my childhood but they are not included on this DVD. There were two low points on the DVD, even lower than the episodes themselves. The first is a Johan episode. I hated him as a kid and I still hate him now. The second low point I already mentioned. The transfer of this DVD is horrible, worse than a VHS copy in my opinion. The people who produced this DVD need to be fired.
Flash forward, almost thirty years later, and a show called SpongeBob Squarepants hit the air. I reviewed Spongebob DVDs in the past and gave them almost universally positive reviews. SpongeBob Squarepants: Truth or Square is the hour-long 10th Anniversary episode and is the first SpongeBob DVD I reviewed that I am not happy with. It is sad that the 10th Anniversary episode is as boring and lame as this one.
The main episode, while an hour long, is complete fluff. The main storyline is SpongeBob, Patrick, Mr. Krabs and Squidward preparing to celebrate their Eleventy Seventh anniversary but getting stuck in the secret passages of Krusty Krabs. However, the episode is interrupted constantly by Patchy the Pirate, the president of the SpongeBob Fan Club, as he tries to organize the 10th Anniversary television special.
Those scenes are lame. There are a number of celebrity cameos in this section including LeBron James, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell and Robin Williams. It also includes a song by Pink. The episode ends with SpongeBob singing a song, almost parodying a Christmas special. It sucked and I don’t see how any kid will like this.
“Porous Pockets,” “Choir Boys,” “Krusty Krushers,” and “The Card” finish off the episodes on this DVD and while they are all better than the main feature, they are below the level I have grown accustomed to. More than ever it seems like the show is aiming for the stoner crowd over the kids and that is not necessarily a good thing. This is the worst SpongeBob DVD I have seen yet.
The Package
The only extra feature on The Smurfs DVD is a fluffy Meet the Smurfs special that sucks.
SpongeBob comes with two special features, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the new opening for the feature and some karaoke music videos. The new opening sequence is done in 3-dimensional animation with a horrible version of the song. The making of is about six minutes long.