Die Schlümpfe und die Zauberflöte

The Smurfs and the Magic Flute

Earning money with a musical instrument is possible on the right subway platform.

Mind you, the musician in this animated movie is making money through magic.

When the king's jester Peewit (Cameron Clarke) gets a hold of a magical flute that can make people spontaneously dance when played, he attracts the attention of a merchant McCreep (Mike Reynolds), who steals the wind instrument to rob villagers.

Now, Peewit and a knight's squire named Johan must use a wizard's spell in order to convene with the mystical blue-skinned forest creatures that first forged the flute if they hope to change McCreep's tune.

Written and directed by the Smurf's creator Peyo, this 1976 hand-drawn feature from Belgium set the standard of what would go on to become the 1980s Saturday morning cartoon phenomenon; mostly because it feels like three episodes pieced together.

Incidentally, when Smurf's hear the magic flute played they turn rabid.

Green Light

vidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

My review was written in February 1984 after a Times Square screening.

"The Smurfs and the Magic Flute" is an uninteresting but innocuous animated feature film bringing the popular hit of books, tv and merchandising, the Smurfs (or "Schtroumpfs" as they were originally known in parts of Europe) to the big screen. Its success in U. S. distribution just before the last Christmas season is more a testament to effective marketing and a vacuum of new, G-rated product than to the virtues of the film itself.

Weak, episodic storyline, set in the Middle Ages, has a bandit named Oilycreep stealing the magic flute (which has the power to cause people to dance uncontrollably when it is played) from Pee Wee at the king's castle. Pee Wee, whose dubbed voice vaguely resembles that of comic Pee Wee Herman, sets out on a dull trek with his pal Johan to retrieve the magical instrument.

Hypnotized by a friendly wizard, the twosome are transported to the land of the Smurfs, tiny blue creatures who all look alike and wear white hats and pants, except for their 542-year-old leader Papa Smurf, whose hat and pants are red. The Smurfs fabricate a second magic flute for Pee Wee, who ultimately bests Oilycreep in a final reel musical battle. Film has no relationship to Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute".

Despite their billing and title come-on, the Smurfs do not appear (save for a tiny blue hand entering the frame at one point) until the second half of the film. A defensive song designed to demonstrate hw individual Smurfs act like their names only proves that the character animation here lacks the differentiation of say, Disney's Seven Dwarfs.

The film utilizes rather limited animation techniques, with pretty but strictly static backgrounds against which the characters move. Absence of much fantasy material is disappointing and the labored gags aren't funny. The Smurfs themselves have irritating resonant voices and the premise of substituting the word "Smurf" for nouns and verbs in their language is run into the ground. Michel Legrand's soundtrack score (to which additional music has been added for the U. S. release version) is subpar.

With this title, you would expect the movie to be about the smurfs, but in fact they only appear in the second half of the movie. The actual main characters are Johan and Pirlouit, the heroes of a different comic book series by the same creator (Peyo), which are much less well-known internationally. In fact the English dubs renames them as a generic John and William. I gather this was the first appearance in film of the smurfs, and they were not yet famous. Anyway, this was a decent movie that never trascended its target audience. Little kids should enjoy it, but for adults it does not have much to offer, although certain moments and details are funny, and it has decent songs and animation. I did enjoy Johan and Pirlouit more than the smurfs, who are tiny and cute but a bit tiresome with their insistence of substituting every verb with "smurf" when they speak.

This is a real classic: fantastic story by Peyo, classy animation (far superior than Hanna & Barbera's) and great characters. For all the people complaining about the Smurfs not being the main characters, you just don't get it right. This was not meant as a Smurf's story, this was a Johan and Pirlouit story. In this story the Smurfs made their first appearance ever, and they were really meant as secondary characters. Only, they became so popular, that Peyo had to start the Smurf's comic book series, as well. So, blame it on the American distributors that marketed this as a Smurf film, while it's actually a fantastic Johan and Pirlouit story.

I used to be obsessed with comic books as a child. When we weren't playing soccer, me and my friends would ride our bikes to the city library where we'd spend the day reading their gigantic collection, and then take an average of 12 back home with us twice a week. Asterix, Les Tuniques Bleues, Chick Bill, Iznogoud, Thorgal, Achille Talon...all amazing series which I have to thank for my excellent proficiency in the french language. The library also had several movies the public was free to watch, including this one, one of my absolute favorites. I had forgotten all about it until I recently caught it on television while channel jumping...the wave of memories it stirred up at the moment made me cry, I'm not embarassed to say it.

This one-hour cartoon movie unites both the Les Schtroumpfs (the Smurfs) series and the Johan Et Pirlouit series, both by belgian comic book immortal Peyo. Pirlouit, the lovable midget prankster, gets his hand on a magical flute made by les schtroumpfs that forces whoever listens to its melody to dance uncontrollably. You can imagine what he does with it :) However he makes the mistake of demonstrating its power in front of Torchesac, a wandering traveller spending the night in the castle, who subsequently steals it and uses it to rob people by making them dance until they pass out of fatigue. Now Johan and Pirlouit must get it back at all costs, so they head to the magical kingdom of les schtroumpfs to ask for their help.

This movie is extremely old so the animation isn't up to par with what you see today, however it has something today's cartoons don't have: great humor and excellent dialogue. C'est inoui, halfway through the movie I couldn't help but feel pity for today's kids who grow up on cartoons where the dialogue is dumbed down as much as possible, or made cookie-cutter in the sense that there MUST be a moral lesson in the end. It's like they were americanized. This movie isn't like that, the dialogue contains vocabulary and sentence syntax of high level, it feels exactly like reading french comics.

The music is great as well, highlights are the "flute fight" between Pirlouit and Torchesac and the song "Un Petit Schtroumpf", which is probably one of the best musicals moments in film.