Smurfs (2025) Blu-ray + Digital Code

So much of life comes down to timing. If you simply rearranged everything that has happened in your years on this planet, your same experience could be dramatically different. Love, friendship, education, family support, your portfolio, net worth, and credit score. You’d think that whether things occur would matter more than when they occur, but try renting a car before you’re 25 or buying a house after quitting your job and you’ll find that timing matters a lot.

Buy Smurfs from Amazon.com:
Blu-ray + Digital Code · DVD · Prime Video

Timing also matters a great deal in the world of entertainment. It’s not as simple as reviving a property that once was popular. You have to do it when the timing makes sense. Gumby: The Movie arriving in the fall of 1995? Atrocious timing, Art Clokey. Transformers becoming tentpole movies in the late 2000s? Evidently perfect timing, somehow, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay.

Twenty years is traditionally a good amount of time to cultivate generational nostalgia. Grease and “Happy Days” brought back the ’50s to much fanfare in the late ’70s. Twenty-two years after Jurassic Park, Jurassic World (2015) performed about as well as it ever could.

The Smurfs, Sony Pictures Animation’s 2011 live-action with CGI heroes comedy stretched the twenty-year window a bit, arriving thirty years after the comics series by Belgian artist Peyo became a popular animated television series in America. But following in the footsteps of Fox’s similarly-styled Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, it was a massive commercial hit, grossing $563 million worldwide on a $110 million budget despite mostly negative reviews.

The numbers were good enough for Sony to run it back, their design and development work already done and the brand recognition in a healthy place. Released summer 2013, The Smurfs 2 grossed $347.5 million worldwide on an ever so slightly reduced budget to even more negative reviews. These numbers were not deemed favorable enough for Sony, so they cancelled the third live-action movie they had planned and returned in the spring of 2017 with the all-animated Smurfs: The Lost Village. That movie grossed nearly $200 million worldwide on a budget of just $60 M and the reviews were a little bit kinder. But the franchise seemed to have run its course in Sony’s eyes.

In 2022, the Belgian owners of the Smurfs brand signed a deal with Paramount to make multiple new Smurfs movies. The first of these — titled simply Smurfs — hit theaters over the summer. It suffered from bad timing. It also got saddled with bad reviews. And accordingly, the box office performance was not so great either, with a much-reduced $120 million worldwide haul probably not offsetting the film’s more modest $58 M reported budget after marketing and distribution costs were factored in.

A 2025 Smurfs should be a liberating undertaking for its makers because there does not appear to be a protective fanbase or any kind of slavish devotion to the world conceived by Peyo. But, you can tell immediately that no one had a good vision for this revival when the classic “la la, la la la la” theme song transitions into a group-introducing modern-sounding tune, the first of several written and performed by Rihanna, who also voices Smurfette like it’s still the late 2000s.

With the one-note characters established, our focus is turned to No Name (voiced, seemingly just to annoy people, by James Corden), who sings an “I want” song before discovering “his thing”: magic. Specifically, he encounters an enchanted item that pertains to the biblical wizard-and-books prologue with which we opened. Papa Smurf (voiced by John Goodman) gets abducted. Before he disappears, he encourages his kind to track down someone named Ken. That Ken proves to be Papa’s red-bearded brother (voiced by Nick Offerman).

The Smurfs assume their nemesis Gargamel is to blame for Papa Smurf’s abduction, but in reality it is Gargamel’s shorter, mustachioed, more hunched brother Razmael (voiced, like Gargamel, by JP Karliak) who has the Smurfs’ leader in captivity.

In a bit of pandering to international moviegoers, the Smurfs end up in the real world, specifically Paris, where a group encounters another group of “International Neighborhood Watch” Smurfs. There is a little bit of live-action scenery, but for the most part this remains an animated production, with CG visuals that opt for a semi-flat two-dimensional look and briefly explore other animation styles (e.g. 8-bit video game, anime).

Those who would have first taken to Smurfs back in the early 1980s are either in their fifties now or close to it. If they have kids, those kids are quite possibly in high school or college now. Maybe there are even some young grandkids, but it’s hard to imagine generations bonding over 2025’s Smurfs. It’s a light, breezy affair that no one seems to have fretted or sweated over or tried to make excellent. Excellence was never on the agenda. Director Chris Miller, a DreamWorks alum not to be confused with the Christopher Miller of Lego Movie Lord-Miller renown, probably just made sure deadlines were met and that Paramount Animation executives were not terribly displeased.

Fourteen years since they were born out of the Oscar-winning Rango, Paramount Animation still has not established any kind of discernible brand identity or culture. Wikipedia numbers Smurfs the studio’s tenth release over the past ten years and those ten are just all over the place. Some carry Nickelodeon branding, including two SpongeBob movies and a third that will open this Christmas (but not the franchise’s two recent Netflix spin-off movies, which apparently are untouched by Paramount). Several of the movies have gone straight to streaming on Paramount+. The best of the bunch, 2024’s Transformers One, was a box office flop. And even that movie has not approached the creative heights of Rango or competitors’ movies that vie for the Best Animated Feature award.

Three months after its fourth-place opening, Smurfs will hit Blu-ray and DVD but not 4K Ultra HD on October 28th from Paramount. This review covers the Blu-ray + Digital Code edition.

BLU-RAY DISC SPECIFICATIONS:

1.78:1 Widescreen
Dolby Atmos (English), Dolby Digital 5.1 (English UK, Danish, Spanish Latin American, French, French Canadian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish),
Descriptive Video Service (US English, UK English),
Subtitles: English, English for Hearing Impaired, Danish, Spanish Latin American, French, French Canadian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish
Extras Subtitled
Release Date: October 28, 2025
Single-sided, dual-layered disc (BD-50)
Blue Keepcase in Cardboard Slipcover

VIDEO and AUDIO

For all the issues you can take with the film and its approach, Paramount’s Blu-ray is nothing less than vibrant digital perfection with a lively soundtrack. It is surprising that a major studio summer family movie does not warrant a 4K edition, a decision that will upset less discerning physical media collectors, but I’m sure the market research bears this decision out.

BONUS FEATURES, MENUS, PACKAGING and DESIGN

A sticker on the case touts “over 25 minutes of Smurf-filled bonus content, a claim this Blu-ray makes good on.

Things begin with “Blue in the Booth: Voicing The Smurfs” (5:13), a short celebrating the voice cast, which beyond the over-touted Rihanna genuinely impresses in talent assembly. James Corden, Dan Levy, Sandra Oh, Marshmello, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, and Nick Offerman are shown recording and reflecting on their work here.

“There’s A Smurf Like Me: Blue, Old, and New” (4:05) again lets the familiar faces behind the voices lead the way on a promotional discussion of Smurfkind and the particular characters they personify. I suspect most of these entertainers will be embarrassed by this piece soon, if they aren’t already.

“A World They’ve Never Seen: Animating Smurfs” (5:22) considers this production’s visuals and how it stayed true to the original Peyo comics.

“Composing the Blue” (4:31) turns our attention to composer Henry Jackman and the orchestra score he created for this Smurfsterpiece.

“In the Club with DJ Snake” (2:56) takes us on location in Rome standing in for Paris and a behind-the-scenes look at the most mixed medium stretch of the film, with the French DJ and others weighing in.

We conclude with two music videos.

“Higher Love” (2:57) by Desi Trill featuring DJ Khaled, Cardi B, Natania, and Subhi does not cover Steve Winwood as its title suggests, but does repeatedly rip off the chorus from Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.” The video features the artists approximating Smurf dimensions as they perform amidst high grass and mushrooms. In case you were wondering, DJ Khaled is still yelling his name on others’ songs.

“Friend of Mine” (3:30) opens and closes with Rihanna twirling a large daisy like an umbrella. In between, animation reigns as Smurfette sort of lip-sync the sparse lyrics of this otherworldly dance number.

The Blu-ray’s static, silent menu lets you quickly and easily jump to nine scenes, any bonus feature, and any of the extensive dub and subtitle options at your disposal.

Topped by a basic glossy slipcover, the standard Blu-ray case holds a single insert supplying the code for the digital copy of the film that is included with your purchase.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Smurfs may not be quite as terrible as the Internet indicates, but it’s not much better. This mostly animated musical comedy falls flat and makes no case whatsoever for this franchise to go any further. Paramount’s Blu-ray sports terrific A/V and all the foreign language options you could want. But it’s just lipstick on a pig, that I can’t in good conscience recommend.

Buy Smurfs from Amazon.com:
Blu-ray + Digital Code · DVD · Prime Video