DVDFile

Warner Home Video / 1981-1982 / 319 Minutes / G
Street Date: October 7, 2008
From my review of Volume 1 of the first season…

During spontaneous moments of free-association, there are a few iconic images that come to mind when I think of my pre-teen years in the early 1980s: in no particular order, Pac-Man, the Atari 2600, Devo-glasses, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Rubik’s Cubes, Fraggle Rock, and Smurfs. What distinguishes The Smurfs animated series from so many other child-directed cartoons (before or after) is the depth of characterization – the multi-faceted portrayal of the protagonists struggling with complex realities where moral ambiguity runs amuck. These multi-dimensional and interweaving thematic lines were a mainstay of the show’s talented writing staff. The series’ somewhat graphic violence was a bit edgy for the time, and urban-myth maintains that several syndications wouldn’t air the program after the first season because of parental complaints about the violent content and the program’s darker, more adult-themes, which left many children bewildered and confused (cartoons dealing with sexual assault and terminal illness were not all that common in the early 1980s).

Scratching your head with a confused look on your face? Hey, you try to figure out a way to spice-up a review of The Smurfs! Honestly it doesn’t get much more innocent than The Smurfs: the cartoon is the veritable cup-cake of the animated-television world. The show is so pandering on so many levels that even its introduction shamelessly states “There were the Smurfs; they were good… and then there was Gargamel, he was bad.” Nice to have that clarified up front just in case any viewer would find themselves uncertain during an episode’s climatic resolution.

That being said, I love the Smurfs. Sigh. What can I say? And what’s even scarier is that after these (gulp, 27?) years since first viewing them on television, the show is just as entertaining. I think what does it for me is that beneath the cutesy surface there’s actually a layer of sarcasm for the viewer who is willing to pay attention. Nothing as viscerally edgy as South Park so don’t measure my appraisal according to the standards set by adult-oriented-animation satires of today. But if you look carefully at The Smurfs you’ll see that more than a few times there’s a sly undertone of cynical wit peaking through to wink at the adult viewer who might be stopping by. Then of course it’s back to sugar-coated hug-fest fun. The show survived nine long seasons (256 episodes... wow) so it must have been doing something right.

Volume Two of Season One...

Warner has finally released the second half of the 39 total Smurf episodes from Season One. While I don’t understand the logic of breaking the season up into two sets, if you get them on sale the cost shouldn’t run you any higher than a typical “full season” television set and the narrow disc cases don’t take up much room on the shelf.

The shows are not necessarily presented in the order of their original television release, but bear in mind that their intended animation sequence wasn’t necessarily reflected in the chronology of their appearance on television. Just as with the first volume, sometimes 2-3 episodes are linked together in succession, as they were during their original television airing. The episodes by name are:

First Disc:

The Magic Egg, Smurfette's Dancing Shoes, Supersmurf
The Baby Smurf, The Fake Smurf
Paradise Smurfed, Sir Hefty, The Purple Smurfs
Haunted Smurf, Sideshow Smurfs
Second Disc:

The Magnifying Mixture
Foul Weather Smurf, Painter And Poet, The Abominable Snowbeast
Gargamel- The Generous, Now You Smurf'em- Now You Don't
The Fountain Of Smurf, Spelunking Smurfs
 A Clockwork Smurf
The Smurfs And The Money Tree 

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

I’m impressed, just as I was with the Volume One. These DVDs are not derived from recycled video masters like many of the other-region sets you may have seen on eBay. Warner appears to have produced these discs from original 1.33:1 film masters. Not only are they stunning in terms of clarity (for 16 mm source) and color saturation, but they appear to be flagged properly as film-source material so there’s no combing or scan-line aliasing problems you often find with budget-DVDs of TV shows taken from later-generation video tapes. The film elements also appear mostly free from damage and abuse (without the band-aid of digital noise reduction... more on that later).

Honestly I didn’t think that the cartoons could look this good. Smurfs looks better than the Looney Tunes collections if that give you a point of reference (and much better than the Fraggle Rock DVDs which had to be sourced from video since no film masters of that program were ever produced... though everyone reading this review should order their Fraggle Rock season sets as well). Colors are so vivid and lush that you actually find yourself staring into the background artwork to take in all the details (granted, Hanna-Barbara isn’t exactly classic-Disney grade animation, but any hand-painted art is fascinating to examine when it’s rendered so faithfully). The detail is much more revealing than I would have expected, and only appears slightly softened which is probably at least in part due to the source material. There are some mild edge halos around some of the hard-animated lines which were noticeably on my 106 inch screen, though I’d expect folks viewing from farther than two screen-widths won’t be too distracted (had there been no edge-ringing, the video would have been as good as one could get given the source).

And thank goodness there’s some visible cell-dust and occasional print-scratch in the picture to remind us that we’re watching an image that was created by hand using analog processes. I say thank goodness because far too many mastering engineers reach for the DNR dial to try to digitally air-brush these anomalies away, and in doing so they destroy the integrity of the image, especially because many DNR algorithms get confused with hand-animation and start to toss out what really ought to stay. Rest easy Smurf comrades – I see no signs of improper DNR use whatsoever: every hand-drawn contour line remains stable without the ghosting or vanishing act seen on some less carefully mastered material.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Just like with the first volume, the English Dolby Digital Mono track is all you get. It sounds quite dated, but dialogue and music come through with good fidelity (although with restricted dynamic range and frequency response) and I even heard some mild bass in one of the Smurf’s musical numbers. It is what it is.

You also get English SDH captions. I had to laugh at the menu for listing “languages” and then only get one choice in English.

The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

There is one special feature, a 16-minute featurette titled “I Smurf the Smurfs!” In this short, a variety of production talent, voice-actors, and celebrity talent comment on their relationship with the series. Contributors include writers Mark Zicree and Mel Gilden, President/Executive Director of the museum of comic and cartoon art Matthew C. Murray, actress Jo Marie Payton, actress Candace Cameron Blue, director/producer Debbie Allen, actress/musician Persia White, voice artist Gary Owens, Lucille Bliss, actress Catherine Hicks, Danny Goldman, and June Foray talk about the show. The featurette covers the history of the Smurf concept, how it was created by Peyo and how Hanna-Barbera ended up producing the television animated series. We even get a snippet of the voice-talent for Smurfette speaking in her Smurfette voice. Can you ask for more?

Well maybe you could, considering that this 16 minutes short is all the bonus material you get on this set. But considering the material of the show, It’s more than I bargained for.


Exclusive DVD-ROM Features: What happens when you pop the disc into your PC?

There are no DVD-ROM features on this DVD.

Final Thoughts

Just as with Volume One, I couldn’t believe how quickly watching The Smurfs Season One – Volume Two took me back to the '80s. And the nostalgia-fest held me captive for a several hours; I simply could not stop watching these episodes. If you grew up watching the Smurfs on television like I did this set is a no-brainer for the “I must buy to relive my childhood memories” pile. I’ll add that anyone with young kids who’s become deranged by the strobe-pulsing action of most cartoon programs these days where everyone’s screaming instead of talking and the show has to blare like a siren and flash like an emergency light to keep the kids’ attention, The Smurfs Season One – Volume One and Two offer a nice alternative as a program that relies on actual stories for entertainment. The image quality of this DVD set is quite impressive for an early ‘80s cartoon (film-source masters being used rather that lower-cost video masters) and the mono audio is just fine. I would have appreciated more bonus material, but the short is enjoyable and let’s hope we see more on the season sets to come. Enjoy.