Distributor: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Episodes: 99
Duration: approx 5-20 min (per episode)
The Smurfs: Season 3 & 4 (DVD) – Series Review
As our editorial office is located in Belgium, we pride ourselves when we see things that originated from our tiny little speck on the world map. In this case, we revisit the work of Peyo, which got turned into a cartoon that spanned over nine seasons. This was however outsourced to America to the very popular Hanna-Barbera, who presented us with all-time classics such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Wacky Races, Scooby-Doo and many others. This time we revisit the series of The Smurfs, more specifically the third and fourth season, which are being rereleased by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. We were happy to see our blue friends from our childhood again, but we ended up with very mixed feelings about this.
In terms of story and progression, there is not that much to tell about The Smurfs. They occasionally introduce new characters and such, but other than that, it are all separate tiny little stories. Initially different episodes could contain several tiny stories, but for this DVD release they split up each story making it easier to pick which one you’d like to see. While we reckon you don’t remember the titles of the stories you saw in the past, it does make it easier for children to mix and match the stories they like after having viewed the entire season.
While it’s fun to revisit old cartoons such as this, especially when you hope they would end up being remastered or at least digitally enhanced. Sadly, many things go wrong with this fairly cheap rereleases of The Smurfs. We noticed audio sync issues, that carried on for entire episodes and there was also a very big difference in image quality between different episodes of the same box, or even disc. We noticed some episodes had very crisp footage, while others were barely viewable without basically holding your nose against the screen. It feels like they lost proper footage of certain episodes and had to make do with screen captures from early recordings. This makes the series sometimes very unwatchable. Also, for a localized release with only Dutch and French audio, and no subtitles, it’s quite peculiar to have the English titles visible, instead of said localized titles, or at least a small subtitle stating the translated name.
Conclusion
The Smurfs: Season 3 and Season 4 respectively are still nice and cheap rereleases of a very good cartoon from the 80s. While the quality can be very dodgy at times, it’s still a fun blast from the past. We do regret not having the original English audio or subtitles, but it might be fun to introduce a younger audience to these old school adventures of The Smurfs.
The Smurfs: Season 3 & 4 (DVD) - Series Review,
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