Hank Azaria's Smurftastic Villain

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Source: GEEKCHICDAILY

The Simpsons' voice-meister gets gleefully giddy as Gargamel.

Why did Gargamel want to catch the Smurfs anyway? In the cartoon, it was usually about making them ingredients in potions. Ingredients. Hmmm. They're little. They're blue. We bet they taste like blueberries. Mmmmmm. Smurfberry pie with real minced Smurf on top. Maybe we want to catch some too...

Old-school Smurfs fans are divided on the idea of a 3-D live-action movie. We say: why worry? If you're concerned about realism in this case, you should probably take a hearty bite out of a mushroom house, sit back, and enjoy the show. One thing most agree on so far is that Hank Azaria seems to have captured the essence of the evil and inept wizard Gargamel. Sporting hideous prosthetics, the actor known for animation voices (The Simpsons) is now making his next cartoon character out of flesh and bone.

GCD caught up to Azaria at Sony Animation Studios, where he discussed his unique take on the villain and his cat collaborator Azrael: "My idea was that they were [like] a married couple. Instead of making evil pronouncements to nothing, which really annoyed me about the old Gargamel, I wanted him to be more personally involved with the cat and for the cat to be considerably smarter." Azaria was determined to do a different take on his 2-D predecessor, adding an accent and more schtick. The more he practiced, though, he realized he connected with the original balding baddie. After all, he says, "You can't be Gargamel and not get very upset about Smurfs."

Gargamel plays the blues in The Smurfs on-screen starting July 29th.

http://smurfhappens.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gargamel