Movie Reviews: Making a Sentence Out of Two Titles Edition: The ‘Smurfs’ and ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’

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We Smurfed What You Smurfed Last Smurf (CREDIT: Paramount Animation; Brook Rushton/Columbia Pictures)

Smurfs

Starring: Rihanna, James Corden, John Goodman, Nick Offerman, JP Karliak, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Kurt Russell, Xolo Maridueña, Hugo Miller, Chris Miller, Billie Lourd, Marshmello, Spencer X, Chrisy Prynoski

Director: Chris Miller

Running Time: 92 Minutes

Rating: PG for Smurf Action and Some Rude Smurfin’

Release Date: July 18, 2025 (Theaters)

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Starring: Chase Sui Wonders, Madelyn Cline, Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr., Billy Campbell, Gabriette Bechtel

Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R for Twisting, Poking, and Hanging, Plus a Few Seductions and a Couple of Joints

Release Date: July 18, 2025 (Theaters)

A couple of decades-old franchises are getting revived at the multiplex this weekend. That sentence could apply to just about any weekend from the past 25 years or so. But in case you’re reading this review from the future (or the past), the weekend I’m specifically referring to right now is the one that begins on July 18, 2025. And the movies I’m talking about are Smurfs (no “the”) and the same-titled lega-sequel I Know What You Did Last Summer. Is there any way both of these movies could possibly appeal to the same person?! Let’s use myself as a test case.

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‘Glass Onion’: A Friends Out Moviegoing Experience

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Will they solve it? (CREDIT: John Wilson/Netflix © 2022)

Starring: Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline

Director: Rian Johnson

Running Time: 139 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: November 23, 2022 (Theaters)/December 23, 2022 (Netflix)

I saw Glass Onion (one of those newfangled Knives Out mysteries) in a cinema with a larger-than-normal party than I usually go to the theater with. And I’m very grateful for all of that! That’s what it called for, and if I’d been watching on Netflix, I’m worried that my attention would have strayed too much during the first act. Undoubtedly, that mental wandering would have been a HUGE problem if I’d looked down while Ed Norton was dressed just like Tom Cruise in Magnolia. And that just simply would have been unacceptable.

Grade: A Satisfactory Amount of Flavor When Peeling the Layers of the Onion