Smurfs : The Lost Village - IFX Movie Day

It was the Melaka Historical City day last Saturday. A fine weekend with family and friends (who work at the same Great Place as I do) at the GSC Aeon Bandaraya Melaka, for another Movie Day organized by the IFX executive recreation club, Club81. This time round, the movie of choice - Smurfs : The Lost Village.

As mentioned in my previous post (http://marvinchong.blogspot.com/2017/04/beauty-beast-outing-to-gsc-aeon.html), originally I had in plan to watch the slightly-controversial-awhile-ago Beauty and the Beast. With the rest of the movies offered being somewhat unsuitable for kids, this was basically the only feasible choice left. I try to keep the rest of this post spoiler-free.... :)

Where Beauty and the Beast was a live-action remake of the cartoon, Smurfs : The Lost Village is a fully animated show. Seems to be a reboot of the movie series, as the earlier 2 movies from Sony Entertainment Pictures was a live-action + CGI combo. While there was no practical way to make a Smurf any other way than through CGI, I found that in the previous 2 movies, the lead antagonist portrayed by actor Hank Azaria did not port well into real-life. So, the decision to revert back to a "real" cartoon is IMHO all for the better.

Now, this being the company movie day, it's always necessary to register early to get a good seat. This is the reason for the large crowd of people outside the entrance of Aeon Bandaraya Melaka well before the official opening time of 10am. The only other time you'll see this is during the occasional J-card member  day sale. To be honest, not many chose to watch this show, so in the end the cinema hall appeared to be only 80% full.

After registering, there was enough time for breakfast before the show started at 11am (another advantage to coming early). We sat down at Hailam Kopitiam on the ground floor (opposite Old Town white coffee) and basically went with the breakfast sets as we expected that to be the fastest option, given that we had 5 adults and 5 children at the table. Well, that's true for the most part, with the exception of the half-boiled eggs which came with some of the selected sets. How late, you might ask? Well, let's just say, our decision to split the group and collect the complimentary popcorn / drinks while the others finished breakfast was a wise decision, as we just barely made it in as the pre-show ads were about to end.

For the company movie day, there did not seem to be a differentiation in tickets - all of them were "adult tickets" and priced accordingly. Cost is as follows:-

Adult ticket:
Ticket price - RM11.07
GST (6%) - 0.66
Entertainment tax (25% of ticket price before GST) - RM2.77
Total - RM14.50

This was for the normal ticket, which was RM1.50 cheaper than one with enhanced Dolby Atmos.

As for the movie itself, without giving too much away, I can say that all the "mandatory" Smurf elements are there - Smurfs individual behavior / characteristics according to their names (which makes you wonder how one would name a new-born Smurf), Gargamel + Azrael  as the complementary pair of villains. As one might guess for shows of this type, there's a fair amount of songs and singing, though none of the tunes stick to your head like those typically found in Disney movies (yes, you know I'm comparing to THAT recent show again).

Well, in the end, I see my kids were entertained. The U-rated family show was watchable for me (not quite the death-by-boredom experience that I feared).