Ah, Paris… the romantic heart of a dying language and culture, and the star of the hotly anticipated second installment in The Smurfs trilogy. You’ve gotta feel for the French. They were poised to continue their reign as the torchbearers of western civilization through the twentieth century and into the new millennium. However, they made a bit of a boo-boo when they forgot to finish the impregnable Maginot Line. This allowed Hitler, over a quick brunch of strudel and Beck’s, to put together an invasion plan in about fifteen seconds that consisted of two words: “Go around.” Now, people only speak French to get bemused grins out of the chicks they’re trying to pick up in American bars.

Still, Paris is an awesome town, and if you ever go to France, it should definitely crack the top eight on your list of places to hit up while you’re there. I personally made the voyage to La Ville-Lumière just last summer with my first and only love, Michelle. (We met nineteen years ago, when I concussed her after sliding with far too much velocity into a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit.) It was our first trip overseas together, and we could barely contain our excitement. As we boarded the Air France flight out of Hartsfield International, we both greeted the stewardess with the French term for “good evening” when it was actually still daytime. We both cracked up as we realized our silly little mistake, as did the stewardess. It was hilarious.

The romance kicked in to high gear once we landed at Chuck De Gaulle Airport. The first thing Michelle and I did when we got off the plane was head to the duty-free shop to purchase berets with our names embroidered on them. To be sure, those things didn’t come off for the duration of the trip, even when the rest of our bodies were in various states of intimate undress.

As we walked hand-in-hand along the Seine, we attempted to admire the city’s unrivalled architecture as it glistened in the orange glow of a midsummer’s sunset. Yet we often found ourselves ignoring the cityscape in favor of simply exchanging little smiles back and forth, as no mere earthly construct could trump the beauty and pure love we saw in each other. We tried to have our likenesses painted by one of the many venerable Parisian street artists we met along the river. However, it was a complete disaster, as every ten seconds or so we would have to break our pose to kiss for the next five seconds. Jacques was none too pleased and threw his easel to the ground in disgust.

On the final evening of our trip, we went to the Eiffel Tower plaza to partake in the Bastille Day celebrations. We each drank a glass of exquisite champagne as fireworks bombarded the starry sky. Yet, the glow beaming down from above was dull in comparison to the shimmer of Michelle’s blue eyes as she stared deeply in mine. In that moment, I was never more confident that she was the woman I would spend the rest of my life with. I gently took her left hand and dropped down to my knee. When I presented the ring, she smiled so brightly that it was as if she had regained her childhood innocence. As the fireworks reached their crescendo over the Eiffel Tower behind us, I formally requested her hand in marriage.

She said no.

It’s ok though. I’ve bounced back somewhat, and am currently dating a great new girl. She works 25 hours a week collecting signatures for credit card receipts at a New Jersey gas station, and 15 hours a week pinning assorted photos of ankle tattoos on Pinterest. However, it’s been a bit tough forming a mature relationship with her, given that she religiously follows whatever advice Carly Aquilino dispenses on Girl Code.

I however, have some advice that all should heed. Avoid The Smurfs 2 at all costs. If you find yourself at the theater even pondering the possibility, I recommend sticking your finger under your tee-shirt and attempting a hold-up of the ticket kiosk. The next two hours will likely go much better than if you had sat down to watch Neil Patrick Harris attempt a role where he’s not making fun of himself, and you might end up with a nice wad of Hamilton’s to help cover your Wal-Mart check cashing fees.

The Smurfs 2 is an insult to what most would consider the point of a movie; that is, an artistic endeavor. As long as you’re trying to move the intellectual and emotional needle of the audience, you get at least some credit, regardless of whether or not you end up failing miserably. These guys didn’t try. Their ploy was as such: They realized at some point, whether it be during the writing, filming, or editing stage of the production, that they had nothing; the movie was crap. So instead of trying to hone what little they had, they just decided to throw everything into the pot, hoping that some part, any part, of the movie would magically end up working. The Smurfs 2 is the ultimate exercise in quantity over quality. You get moved along from line of dialogue to line of dialogue, shot to shot, scene to scene, at an unrelenting pace. There are absolutely zero moments where things just breathe, and the characters take stock of the situation. No time for that. The filmmakers weren’t smart enough to figure out which parts might have artistic merit, so they just bombard us with everything they’ve got. No shot was left on the cutting room floor.

As in any movie where the creative parties have no clue what they’re doing, there are moments that transcend the realm of unentertaining to enter the realm of perplexing. This describes pretty much the whole film, but I’ll narrow it down to an exemplary three moments:

1. Neil Patrick Harris (I’ll refer to as NPH from here on out so you can get back to re-bleaching your underwear sooner) is told by some smurfs that the chick smurf has been kidnapped in Paris. He’s in New York, accompanied by his busy family, and immediately replies to the tune of “OK, we’re off to Paris!” Another person says something. Then, NPH re-enters the conversation with “Wait, we can’t go to Paris…!” Like I said, nothing was left on the cutting room floor, even directly contradictory dialogue.

2. A talking duck, addressing the confusion of the humans around him, states, “It’s global warming. Buy a Prius.” Someone’ll have to explain that one to me.

3. The smurfs fall into a puddle of water. They call it mud.

There’s also super-hip, super-timely references abound, like alluding to Facebook seventeen times, the uttering of the phrase “as if” in a non-ironic way, and the liberal use of tablet computers (though not an iPad, but a Sony version that I’m not sure is even on the market).

For roughly the first half of the movie, the majority of the dialogue centers on the wonderfully intricate backstory and motivations of the smurfs and their adversary, the pedophile sorcerer Gargamel. Unfortunately, the backstory and motivations are retarded, so you’ll stop paying attention and have no idea what’s going on for the bulk of the movie. It’s something about Gargamel needing the coveted and scarce blue juice of the smurfs, which he can use as “essense” for his magic wand and ultimately lead to his taking over the world. However, for his “day job”, he puts on magic shows at various illustrious theaters, which usually consist of turning audience members into animals via the freewheeling use of the supposedly precious smurf piss. Why is he wasting it? Furthermore, the mechanics of how he would “take over the world”, and what that end result would entail, are never addressed.

Understanding the finer points of the plot is irrelevant anyway. The whole point of this movie was to throw the smurfs into random locations/situations around Paris, hoping for something funny to happen. There’s an A, B, C, and D story, which we get switched between with reckless abandon, with no continuity established among them. There’s an entire storyline dedicated to how NPH’s stepdad killed NPH’s pet bird when he was a boy, because NPH is allergic to birds… it was very strange.

If you’re an adult, and the children who stole your youth forced you to take them out to see this pile of crap, you may have held out hope that there would be enough “adult” moments to tide you through. I’m sorry to dash those hopes. On NPH… I boycotted Doogie Howser, M.D. as a boy because I thought it was shameless propaganda for a single-payer healthcare system, so I wasn’t really sure if he could act. He did knock it out of the park though in the Harold and Kumar saga, so I was hoping to see more of that self-deprecating humor going on here. Not gonna happen. It’s the flattest, most emotionless performance you will ever see. While I wasn’t sure about NPH, I was delighted when Brendan Gleeson popped in, playing the bird-hating stepdad. This is a guy who deserved to sweep every single Hollywood award for In Bruges, so surely he’s got the talent to lift this flick out of the sewer (if the phone call scene in In Bruges can’t win you an Oscar, then nothing can). Unfortunately, the filmmakers felt it was best to sideline his acting chops by immediately having Gargamel transform him into the aforementioned talking duck.

The Smurfs 2 does have its moment… this spectacular joke: Brendan Gleeson/talking duck is trapped in a restaurant with a bunch of other ducks that are about to get fried. They manage to escape, prompting the talking duck to exclaim “Free at last! Free at last!” Then, NPH replies with “Who are you, Martin Luther Wing?” In Dueling Chap-Land, that’s a 10. So we’ll average out that 10 with the score for the remainder of the movie, and the result is the numerical assessment you see below.