If you felt like making yourself thoroughly depressed, bemoaning the state of Hollywood movies, or wondering what happened to the adorable blue imps of your youth, perhaps you read my review of The Smurfs 3D yesterday.

In particular, the line "The remarkable thing about The Smurfs is the level of contempt it has for its audience."

I realised yesterday, as I was passing a spray of plastic flowers outside a $2 shop, that I forgot to mention the most contemptible/contemptuous thing about the whole blasted movie:

There's a scene, which is of course absent from the internet so you'll have to bear with me, where Clumsy plants a whole lot of potplants.

Jayma Mays' Grace says that nothing much grows on their balcony garden (because, you know, they haven't been blessed with the magic of Communist imps yet), and Clumsy promises to "Smurf" the seeds into life.

Wouldn't you know it, they come back home a day or so later and the whole house is full of magical flowers and vines!

Except for one thing: ALL THE FLOWERS AND LEAVES WERE PLASTIC.

Seriously. There is one scene of a Smurf (I forget which one, I was so blinded by rage and the terrible 3D print) lifting up a fake gerbera, its flocked wire "stem" clearly visible.

You know, like the ones we all had during the '90s. Like this:



The leaves are all clearly waxed fabric, like these:



Yes, you read me correctly, IMITATION FUCKING FLOWERS, EVERYWHERE, IN THE MIDDLE OF A MOVIE THAT COST $110,000,000 TO MAKE



WHY? Why was that the best they could do?

The problem is not necessarily that they were imitation - after all, all the flowers in The Wizard Of Oz were plastic, and they still look incredible - but rather that they were the cheapest of the cheap. You might expect a "magical" sequence in a graduating short film to feature the greatest hits of What A Bargain!! on Sydney Road, but not a major motion picture.

They could have planted 150 "Potted Colour" seedlings and had the place really look magical! They could have spent $10,000 a day - the scene was about three minutes long, so factor in maybe three or four day's shooting - and had cut flowers installed in florists' foam! They could have animated the bastards and dropped them in on a green screen!!

THAT'S the level of contempt The Smurfs has for its audience. It says, "Hey, these flowers are clearly plastic ones, but we don't give a shit. We don't think you'll notice, because you were all stupid enough to shell out an extra $4 to see this monstrosity in 3D, so why would you care about whether the flowers look real?"

Well, Smurfs Inc, I CARE.