DVDFile

Warner Home Video / 1981-1982 / 345 Minutes / Unrated
Street Date: February 26, 2008

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 Season One – Volume One! Honestly it doesn’t get much more saccharine than The Smurfs: the cartoon is the veritable cup-cake of the animated series 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.

Fine. I can see the way you’re looking at me so I’ll just admit it. I love the Smurfs. Sigh. What can I say? And what’s even scarier is that after these (gulp, 27?) years, it’s 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.

What’s wrong with this DVD set is that you’re only getting the first half of the first season. (That’s right, it’s not the full season one. Darnit.) I’ve heard that the original plan was to put all 39 episodes into a single set (what I would have preferred), but for whatever reason Warner or the licensing group changed their mind and now you get 19 episodes with the qualifier “Season One – Volume One” on the cover. I expectantly assume that means there will be a “Volume Two” to finish off the rest of the first season.

One thing to note is that the episodes do not follow the order of their original air-date chronology. However, I think the discs’ producers have actually improved upon things by the order that they selected. You see, the original air-date for the show had several episodes with Smurfette before we finally reached the episode where Smurfette is created by Gargamel and is introduced to the Smurf village. In this DVD compilation the first episode (The Smurf’s Apprentice) doesn’t contain the Smurfette character, and then the second episode (The Smurfette) introduces her to the village (before we see any episodes where she’s actually a part of Smurf society). I’m not sure if the original television air-date presented the cartoons in the order that the creators would have liked, but this re-ordering for DVD seems appropriate given a few logical progressions like with Smurfette. Did I just say “logical progressions” referring to an analysis of The Smurfs, Season One – Volume One? Enjoy the complete listing of all of Smurf episodes including original air-dates here.

A curious item to note about the way the menu presents the episodes on this DVD is that more than one episode are linked together as a single menu selection. However, once you select the grouping of (2-3) episodes you can skip between them individually using the track button on your remote. The second and/or third companion episodes don’t repeat the show’s title-intro (where we are instructed that Smurfs are good and Gargamel is bad) but if I remember correctly, this was how they appeared on television as well: the first feature having the intro title, and then the second and/or third feature lacking the intro and instead beginning with a title-card announcing the episode’s name.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

I’m impressed. These DVDs are not derived from recycled video masters like many of the other-region sets you may have seen on eBay. Warner has produced these disc 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 slight edge halos around some of the hard-animated lines, but I didn’t find it distracting and it didn’t intrude too much into the picture even when watching projected on my 100-inch screen.

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?

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?

You have two bonus items, both on the second disc. The first somewhat feature-light item is what is optimistically called a Music Video (1:30) which is basically the Smurf song with some scenes from the show as a backdrop. Not rockin’ my world. But the second feature is something that fans will enjoy: a bonus episode, which is the TV special: The Smurfs’ Springtime Special. This show involves Gargamel’s plan to foil the Smurfs’ Easter celebration by tricking Mother Nature. I won’t give away how it ends because I don’t want to ruin your suspense (Am I kidding or being serious? See! Now you can’t tell anymore), but I will tell you that this feature is not mastered from film source material and appears derived from a video master instead. This is good in a way, because it demonstrates what the show looked like to viewers during its TV exhibition under the best of circumstances (perfect TV reception) when it originally aired, and so you can compare and see just how much the quality of the series is improved by the added labor and expense of Warner tracking down the original film masters for the featured season one episodes.

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

I couldn’t believe how quickly watching The Smurfs Season One – Volume One 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 offers 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 let’s see what Warner might pull out for the second installment when it arrives to finish of Season One. Enjoy.