'The Smurfs' won't leave you blue

Wizards, sorcery, power struggles, short subjects -- it can only mean one thing: "The Smurfs," a big-budget, partly animated 3-D return of the mouthwash-colored whatchamacallits best known for their 1981-89 NBC cartoon series, and a theme song that can drive sane men mad. Whether anyone thought the "three-apples-tall" Schtroumpfs (as they were called in the original Belgian comic) were ripe for a major theatrical release is really beside the point: They're blue, they're on view, and if you're a parent of a pre-K kid you may as well resign yourself to 86 minutes of adorableness.

It's a far better time than anyone probably expected. As offered up by director Raja Gosnell ("Beverly Hills Chihuahua") and his seven (yes, seven) screenwriters, the movie's biggest target is the Smurfs themselves: The theme song is ridiculed; so is the fact that they use "smurf" to describe almost everything, and everyone (including Grouchy, Clumsy, Papa and Narrator Smurf). The humans looked confused, but game.

They include a terrific Hank Azaria, as the inept and perpetually cranky wizard Gargamel, who chases the Smurfs into a worm hole that deposits them in Central Park. Once there, they invade the ongoing life of father-to-be and advertising prodigy Patrick Winslow (Neil Patrick Harris) and his wife, Grace (Jayma Mays, "Glee"); Harris seems vaguely pained, Mays is adorable; Patrick's boss (Sofia Vergara, "Modern Family") is a dragon lady and Gargamel is hilarious. If 3-D is your reason for living, "The Smurfs" may not be adequately Smurf-a-delic: Once the real people come in, the effects take a backseat to the humor. But it's a good-natured romp, and only when the film starts to wax sentimental and philosophical does one get the urge to wade in among the Smurfs while doing a Belgian beer-hall dance. You get over it.