Way back in 2008, before Barack Obama and Conan O’Brien issued a joint decree on the end of cynicism, we (as in “I”) approached the prospect of a CGI reboot of The Smurfs with some trepidation and a whole lot of preemptive sarcasm, as was the style at the time. In those dark, despairing days, when bitterness flowed like the honeyed Sparks whose taurine-y candle would be senselessly snuffed out later that year, and we hadn’t yet learned how to mentally retreat to Pandora whenever mankind failed to live up to our wildly inflated sense of nobility, we regarded with some skepticism the idea of a Smurfs film that claimed to be “inspired” by Alvin And The Chipmunks and its hybrid of computer animation and live, dead-on-the-inside actors. In fact, here’s a direct quote, which you should read through clenched teeth punctuated by quick, sharp inhalations through the nose: “Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation have announced plans to produce an Alvin-like ‘hybrid’ version of Belgium's original blue man group The Smurfs with a script from Shrek sequel scribes David Stem and David Weiss, all but guaranteeing that the film will be full of soon-to-be-dated pop-culture references and colored by an ironic detachment that exhausts itself trying to be ‘hip.’” (Oh, how often we are hoisted with our own petard!) But like we said, those were different, knee-jerk times—and now that we’ve gotten a look at the very first print advertising campaign for The Smurfs (starring a heretofore-unknown character we're going to call "Poppers Smurf," because look at him), we are appropriately chagrined. Yep. Chagrined like a motherfucker. [Via ComingSoon]
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