Featured Review: GET SMART

Get Smart


Starring- Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Masi Oka, Terry Crews, David Koechner, James Caan.



Directed by Peter Segal



Grade: C+




"Missed it by that much."

Would you believe Get Smart is a witty, life-changing comedy in three acts? No? Would you believe then that it's full of James Bond like action scenes that just blow you away? No? Then would you believe it's a sometimes funny and middling cookie-cutter action comedy that fails to inspire any original thoughts? Okay good. Getting that out of the way, if you're too young to remember this paragraph's running joke in the original television series, the producers of the Get Smart movie would like you to see their film.

I can see how the boardroom meeting played out. Steve Carell is a hot property who can still be had on the cheap. He's really adept at playing clueless but well-meaning characters. He needs an established franchise. Afraid to concoct a new brand, someone suggests re-imaging the 1960s Get Smart television show. Don Adams' character has Carell written all over it. Demographics show younger fans will come for the action comedy, but hope that like all big-budget 'retro' television show movies, older fans will come for the nostalgia. Everyone is pleased with the idea, send a temp worker to flesh a couple of things out, and order Thai and martinis for lunch.

As it is, Get Smart is a quick paced, solid film. It just doesn't do anything very exceptional. The comedy has its moments, but most of it is given away in the trailers, and still doesn't have the slapstick absurdity that Adams' old show had. The action sequences are kind of cool, but again none of it is breathtaking. One scene even seems to lift a key fight from The Matrix Reloaded. There's just so much beige geniality to the film that there's just not a whole lot to lambaste or praise about it.

The film version re-imagines Maxwell Smart (Carell) as a formerly obese top researcher for the agents of CONTROL, which to the public eye was decommissioned after the Cold War. When it is found out that main enemy Russia's KAOS has compromised CONTROL's intelligence, the Chief (Alan Arkin) finally decides Max, for better or worse, will have to help in the field. He assigns Max, code name Agent 86, with Agent 99, an older woman and top spy who had a face change, played by Anne Hathaway. From there, 86 and 99 must crack the case and stop the film's biggest baddie, Siegfried (Terence Stamp).

Get Smart the television show, created by future movie comedian Mel Brooks, was goofy camp, made strictly to showcase quick one-liners and a breezy 30-minute plot. Because most moviegoers under the age of 45 probably are not familiar with the original show, the film manages to shed away most of what made the television version run for so long, instead focusing on a action-comedy hybrid. It's not a bad thing, but with Carell's penchant for the same kind of comedy Adams used to do, he could have been given more slapstick things to do without resorting to childish humor. That's what made the original television series, and most Mel Brooks comedies in general, so appealing.

Carell as per usual is a compassionate player. Eventually like every comedian his routine will grow old (in 2008, re: Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers), but as the 'befuddled but earnest' guy, it's much more toned down that of a lot of his contemporaries. We understand that Max in the film has a few insecurities left to work out, but being in the employ of CONTROL for so long has given him enough tools to succeed even when the Chief and his fellow agents don't think it. Carell is perfectly fine with that emotional range.

While they keep true to the original with character names (The Chief and the other agents names are never revealed, CONTROL and KAOS are intact, and we get a glimpse of the android Hymie), and the occasional catch phrase, the biggest creative license and perhaps most ill-advised character change is Agent 99. Hathaway's version starts off as a cold, strong, 21st Century woman, almost a feminist. Then she makes a complete 360 two-thirds of the way into the film into a romantic vagabond who has various indiscretions. It took four seasons of flirtatious zingers before Max and 99 fell in love. It took Hathaway's character about 30 minutes. Even Mary Jane from Spider-Man would tell her to slow down.

All in all, Get Smart is like trying to flesh out a comic strip into a feature film. You get the names and the general idea down pat, but after everything is bulked up into two hours, it is modernized and generalized into your average but unsatisfying popcorn movie. In that case, Get Smart could have used some help in their research to "get funnier".

Sorry about that, readers.