Smurfs assemble … for a new adventure, this one taking on gender issues – the distinction between boy smurfs and girl smurfs. In one smurf village, benignly presided over by Papa Smurf (voiced by Mandy Patinkin) they are all male, except for Smurfette (Demi Lovato) a brightly optimistic female creature not unlike Joy from Inside Out. The question of where baby smurfs come from if female smurfs are such an exotic rarity is obliquely touched on when we encounter the evil wizard Gargamel (Rainn Wilson) in his far-off lair who wishes to enslave smurfs and harvest their little blue bodies as his own awful energy source. It is the adventure involved in confronting him that leads us to the lost village of the title, to a whole new, radically different smurf community and to its leader Smurfwillow (Julia Roberts). Fans of smurfiness may well like it, and Gargamel gets some nice lines, but I have to say that both script and animation seemed are entirely predictable, as if generated by some computer software.
