“Storm Loses Her Mojo” (“Bouton d’Or, Guerrière de choc !”)
Summary: Blossom utters a spell that lets her have Storm’s Warrior Spirit/Mojo. It’s going to take a lot of work for the Smurfs to reverse it. For starters, Blossom has taken over the forest and won’t let the Smurfs out of their Village.
Commentary: For some of you, that description will be unintelligible. To be honest, I’m learning as I go here. I need to go back and watch “Smurfs: The Lost Village” again. It’s been too long. (It’s available streaming on Hulu, if you’re curious.)
Just to catch you up to speed in case you’re new here: Storm and Blossom are two of the female Smurfs from the Lost Village of that movie. They hang out with the traditional Smurf Village occasionally in this new series.
It’s nice that they’re included and that the movie isn’t being forgotten. They’re easing the new characters in. They’re not in every episode. They do star or co-star in many, but they’re not the lead characters in the series. When they do show up, it’s not a huge deal. It’s just part of the mix of the cast and the stories. They lead to specific stories that wouldn’t be possible with the first Smurfs Village.
Their big problem, though, is that their names don’t describe their personalities at all. The three that get the air time most in this series that I’ve seen so far are Storm, Blossom, Lily (not in this episode, but she does cook a mean waffle), and Willow (also not here).
Here’s what I learned in this episode: Storm is handy with a bow and arrow. She’s the fierce warrior of the Lost Village. Blossom is the annoying little sister, all too happy to be here and looking up to Storm as someone she wants to be like when she grows up. She doesn’t have her own skill just yet.
In this episode, Blossom chances across a spellbook and uses the spell that takes Storm’s mojo/warrior spirit away from her. The four-leaf clover on Storm’s hat physically attaches itself to Blossom’s to physically show this.
Then Blossom wipes some war paint on her cheeks and it is on like Smurfy Kong.
The episode is played like some kind of Chinese fantasy warrior movie. The soundtrack reflects this with not-Smurf-traditional drum beats and some woodwind sounds. There are also more cuts to go along with that drum beat at key moments. It’s a lot of fun to see these other storytelling styles adapted for The Smurfs. It’s like Samurai Jack if he was three apples tall.
The Smurfs concept can be very malleable, thanks to their simplicity to start with. Seeing pieces of wuxia with big-nosed blue people in Phrygian caps is just fun.
It starts with the camera that follows the arrow as it streaks across the sky and into the target, but it also includes a great 360-degree spin move and some fun forest-at-night lighting and movements. There are even some overcranked slow-motion John Woo-like moments in the episode, though without a pack of doves flying free at the same time. That was a missed opportunity.
I’m tempted to do another storyboard breakdown for this episode, but I do think you need to see these examples in real-time to understand them. It’s a combination of those little moments with the punchy sound effects that sell this episode.
There’s also a fun montage sequence of a group of Smurfs trying to get out of the Village and all the different ways Blossom keeps them in. That includes bouncing them off a mushroom back from whence they came, and bowling them over in barrels. That’s the moment in this episode where I could picture the animators and storyboard artists pitching the ideas back and forth. It’s where the creativity, imagination, and sense of humor of the team working on this series shines.
This is a particularly good-looking episode with strong stylistic tricks and a good sense of humor to it. I liked it a lot.
Title Translation: The French title works out to “Buttercup, Shock Warrior,” which is very descriptive. “Buttercup” is the translation for the French version of Blossom’s name. I like the “Mojo” title, though. It’s a good description of what happens in this story. If I wanted a title that felt more like a translated Chinese warrior movie, I’d go with the French title.
Credits:
Script: Peter Saisselin and Amy Serafin
Storyboard Supervision: Alexandre Viano
Storyboard: Stéphane Annette
Director: William Renaud
“Pop Out!” (“Le Pouvoir du Schtroumpf Grognon”)
Summary: Gargamel’s latest scheme is a doozy: Everything that Grouchy hates will disappear and show up in Gargamel’s hovel. Gargamel is absolutely sure Grouchy will eventually admit his hatred of all Smurfs and thus deliver them to him.
Commentary: The story begins with Gargamel falling victim to his own trap to catch the Smurfs which involves an awful lot of mouse traps. He bounces along the ground until he bounces over a cliff, hangs in the air a second, and then lets gravity do its thing. There’s a moment where his head stays perfectly still while the rest of his body begins to drop.
It’s a perfect Wile E. Coyote moment, and another example of where this series uses squashing and stretching so well. So much CGI looks stiff because they rely completely on the rigged models in the software programs. “The Smurfs” goes beyond that and adds a lot of classic animation techniques to get a better feel on the screen. There’s a definite bounciness to this series that other, cheaper series are missing.
This run-in with The Smurfs inspires Gargamel’s new plot to steal everything Grouchy hates. It is so simple and so stupid that it’s funny. It takes the one Smurfs gag that I’ve long held should be held back so the joke doesn’t get old — that Grouchy hates everything — and turns it into something that you look forward to. You know that everything he says will turn the plot in a new direction, so every “I hate” sentence is the start of a new gag, not the gag in and of itself. That’s enough to make this episode work.
OK, there is one part to this episode that I don’t get. Somewhere along the line, everything that Grouchy says he hates disappears not just from Smurfs Village, but also from the home of Bigmouth, who you may remember from his useless cameo at the end of “The Round Up” (the snail race episode).
I get why he’s there. It’s important to the plot that full-size items get thrown at Gargamel, as well as Smurf-sized ones. But why just Bigmouth? It definitely adds to the hilarity of Gargamel getting overrun by things, but I’m not sure it’s ever explained.
Grouchy Smurf drives his own gag into the ground, but does so in a way that serves the plot. Once Jokey realizes what’s going on and how this power can be used to their advantage, he wants to have fun with it. Away go the dirty dishes and the dirty diapers, for starters. Then, Brainy decides to use the power in a smarter way to bring Gargamel to his knees.
Things pick up tremendous steam in the final minutes as the Smurfs unleash an insane barrage of items at Gargamel by Grouchy just hating them in rapid succession. It comes naturally to him, so it’s easy.
The episode ends with Grouchy and Brainy running home as Brainy asks a series of brutal questions: “Do you like bears? Do you like ogres? Do you like snakes?”
I imagine once that mess got cleaned up, Gargamel reversed the spell. We don’t see that in this story. We don’t need to. This is the old school of cartoon storytelling where something crazy may still be happening at the end, but everyone knows that things will reset back to “normal” before the next episode begins. Better to end on a punchline high note than force an ending to wrap up the story.
Let’s just hope that the spell’s reversal also includes sending all the things back from whence they came. Making all new benches and dishes, alone, would be a lot of work!
Grouchy Inspiration?
Grouchy’s familiar cross-armed pose has an internet meme predecessor: McKayla Maroney.
Uncanny, isn’t it?
Title Translation: The French title works out to “The Power of Grouchy Smurf,” which is more on the nose, but I like it for being more descriptive.
Credits:
Script: Marie Eynard and Emmanuel Leduc
Storyboard Supervision: Alexandre Viano
Storyboard: Bruno Issaly
Director: William Renaud
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