Monday 21 June 2010

The Smurfs: Educationally Unsound

Here's a trailer for, God help us, The Smurfs, which comes out next year. You don't need to watch it to understand the contents of this post so I recommend not bothering.



I have two massive problems with this trailer, apart from the fact that it's not a sick joke. Firstly, this:


A rudimentary knowledge of the English language should encompass an understanding of the suffix "-ed", which is an inflectional suffix. It is so called because it inflects the root word to indicate the past tense. For example:

"I will kill whoever came up with this idea /
I have killed whoever came up with this idea."

If the root word ends with an "e", it is compulsory to only add the "d" of the suffix to indicate the past tense. For example:

"I hate whoever came up with this idea /
I hated whoever came up with this idea. So I killed them."

AT NO POINT is it acceptable to just add a "d" to a root word that does not end with an "e", nor is it in any way permissible to substitute the "e" with an apostrophe, the most abused punctuation mark in existence, unless the normal form of inflection looks odd; Wikipedia cites "KO'd" rather than "KOed" as an example.

My point, therefore, is that it should be "Smurfed" rather than "Smurf'd".

Secondly, the phrase "Next summer our world is about to get Smurf'd" makes little or no sense, even disregarding the tragedy already inflicted on the suffix. "Our world is about to get Smurf'd" would be better, or even "Next summer our world will get Smurf'd". However to include both "Next summer..." and "...about to get..." is a borderline tautology.

Also, that song playing at the end is abysmally shit.

To correct my inevitable errors, click here

10 comments :

  1. A friend of mine living in Russia knows a girl from Belgium, whose job- her actual PURPOSE for being in the country- is to research whether Russians are receptive to the concept of the Smurfs for the movie.

    THIS IS A TRUE STORY.

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  2. It looks like someone needs to pull that smurfing stick out of their smurfing smurf.

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  3. It's a grammatical nightmare. I'm going to read Roget's for an hour.

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  4. Please, please, pretty please, forget trash trailers. It is too easy to paste links hither and thither for these detestable vignettes of filmatic false expectations. Why not simply have pertinent comments from the scribe in the incredible suit about films themselves rather than the tacky marketing world that surrounds them. Those seeing the flicks can compare their own views with those of the 24fps widebrained Incredible Suit and come to trust his opinion and thus be able to avoid the snuf and smurf abominations and see only the cream of cinematography.

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  5. Dear Incredible Suite,

    Before becoming the leader of the pedants revolt, why not chill out by watching 'Whatever Works', the best Woody Allen film since 'Annie Hall' 1977. It is brilliant and will put a smile not a smurf on your face.

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  6. I'm sorry I called you a Suite. It was a typing error. I meant Suit.

    Q: What do you call a follower of your blog
    A: A suitcase

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  7. I think grammar and punctuation are just the tip of the iceberg-of-wrong that that film represents.

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  8. and these problems come in day to day life from native english speakers. imagine then, trying to explain this rubbish to non-english speakers who see the rubbish and copy it. "But it's in the film title, it must be right?" Goddamn, shouldn't be learning engrish if likes a smurfes

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  9. You are all correct. Sorry Tony but I love trailers and trailers love me. Although I got off to a rocky start with the Green Hornet one.

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