La Flûte à six schtroumpfs

Many adults forget that children used to the animated series "the Smurfs" may be disoriented by "The Smurfs and the Magic Flute". I don't forget how confused I was when my parents brought this home from the video store. First off, none of the usual human characters in the animated series appear in the movie. (Missing is Gargamel, among others). The biggest difference is that the voices of the smurfs are completely different than they are in the show, and only a fraction of the personalities in the show are represented. The voices have an eery and, frankly, annoying sound effect on them, making them sound even more chirpy and otherworldy than they ever did on TV.

These inexplicable inconsistencies are coupled with some basic faults: The smurfs do not appear until 20 minutes into the film, long after your kids have left the room or turned on the X box. The story is hard to follow and uninteresting. The magic Flute amounts to nothing more than an oddity for "hardcore" smurf fans.

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.

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.

The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1975) is the second movie in the Smurfs franchise and it was very average.

Positives for The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1975): The animation in this movie looks pretty good and is a nice update from the 1960's movie. The Smurfs are still fun characters to watch on screen. The human characters were a nice addition and their interactions with the Smurfs were fun. And finally, I watched this movie for free on YouTube.

Negatives for The Smurfs and the Magic Flute,(1975): The Smurfs are barely in the movie and this movie has them as the title characters. The movie spends too much time on the human characters and they aren't even the reason to watch this movie. The magic flute doesn't really play a major part in the story and is just a random item for the humans to play with. And finally, this movie feels like it was supposed to be something different, only for the Smurfs to be added in at the last minute.

Overall, The Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1975) is a fine animated movie from the 1970's, but it barely qualifies as a Smurfs movie.

Hello from Barcelona. Yes, this is a great movie. The smurfs don't appear until minute 35 or so but never mind. Johan and Pewee characters are lovely and we know they will meet smurfs later so never mind. The film is 74 minutes long, not 89. Michel Legrand songs are really beautiful and brilliant. All children will love this film and many not so children... Smurfs are drawn much better than the terrific Hanna-Barbera cartoon shows. Here they are just smurfs as they must be, not some kind of bad project bad drown and with no gracefulness. We see Peyo WAS in this movie. If you know the book of this film then you must watch this it. I wonder why it doesn't exist on DVD. There are some smurfs official DVD's in France but this movie is not available yet and I don't understand why if this is the only smurf film ever. I think you can find it in USA, UK, France, Germany, Belgium and Netherlands, but always in VHS format. In some countries it is long deleted since lots of years ago but easy to find in eBAY for example. It's nearly impossible to find in Spain 'cause it was only for rent. In Catalonia there are the catalan version which is just adorable. So...we want this movie on DVD today!! And you must watch it right now!! Joan from Barcelona