Smelliville Parent Guide

Smelliville is a town with a problem: the local dump stinks so badly that tourists have stopped coming, which is forcing local businesses to close their doors for good. Luckily, the mayor’s wife (Tracey Grey) has a plan. She has hired a businessman named Mr. Hammer (Tom Zahner) to build a wellness temple over the dump. Unfortunately, the dump has some new residents, the Ogglies, a family of garbage eating creatures just looking for a home. After befriending the Ogglies, the mayor’s son, Max (Ben Young), must find a way to save the Ogglies’ home, while also saving his town.

Part of me is compelled to just write a one sentence review for Smelliville: it’s gross and badly made and has no substantial positive messages so please don’t waste your time. That’s all this movie deserves in my opinion. However, out of respect for Parent Previews, but not for this production, I will endeavor to elaborate.

Firstly, this movie is gross. The writers rely heavily on farts and burps for “laughs”, but even for immature audiences, it ends up being a bit too much. I just felt vaguely queasy for most of the (mercifully short) runtime, and I usually have a strong stomach! On top of the cringe-y potty humor, the movie suffers from terrible animation and even worse voice acting. I understand the constraints of budgets on animation quality, so I’d be willing to overlook that if the acting or story were any good. None of the voice actors are even passably acceptable in this production. I’ve heard better acting in middle school English classes and those kids aren’t being paid to perform! I’m not 100% sure whether this film was done in English originally or if it was dubbed. The mouths don’t match the words all the time, but they do match often enough that I think we can chalk it up to the poor animation, not dubbing.

Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, this story has no clear positive message. There’s sort of a theme about not judging by appearances, but that doesn’t really come up until the very end and makes no sense plot wise. I assumed there’d be some sort of environmental message, since the dump is a main plot point, but no; the good guys want to keep the large open-air garbage dump how it is. I’m no doctrinaire conservationist, but aren’t those kinds of dumps extremely bad for the environment? At least the bad guys want to plant some grass and trees. The antagonists are also trying to save the local economy so small businesses don’t have to close. Sure, it all works out for the town in the end, but that wasn’t the protagonists’ intentions; it just kind of happened. There are also a few lines of dialogue that are blatantly sexist, which only deepened my fart-induced discomfort.

In closing, there’s no reason at all to watch Smelliville. If you want some kid-aimed media with environmental messaging or themes around not judging by appearances, there are far better options out there. Save yourself the nausea-inducing combination of bad acting, cheap animation, and endless burping. I went through it so you don’t have to. Don’t let my sacrifice be in vain.