Get Smart..or Not?

Posted by ScuzzBuster

June 22, 2008

I really understand Hollywood’s penchant for grabbing on to hot TV or cult commodities and adapting them for the big screen, many times in name only. With the cost of making a film these days, it pays to have a built in audience for something. This increases the chances of at least breaking even at the box office. But for me, the real head scratcher is when something like Get Smart gets the big screen treatment.

Get Smart ran on network television from 1965-1970. After that, it had moderate success in syndication, but never really had long term staying power in reruns on the order of a Star Trek or Brady Bunch from the same eras. Consequently, the current 18-35 generation probably remembers little or nothing of the show. My first exposure to the character was the 1980 film The Nude Bomb, which brought star Don Adams back as Maxwell Smart.

It was not a good movie, but for a 10 year old kid like myself it had enough slapstick, rudeness and innuendo that I found it funny and sought out Get Smart whenever I could. It was slim pickings in the days before the internet and cable. It confused issues for me as well because The Nude Bomb completely ignored the continuity of the original series by eliminating Agent 99, played by Barbara Feldon in the series, Max’s partner and wife in later episodes. Not only did they get married during the course of the original series run, they gave birth to twins in one of the final seasons. The Nude Bomb acknowledged none of this. In addition, The Nude Bomb had absolutely no involvement from the creators of the series Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The makers of the current film did employ Brooks as consultant.

There were a couple more attempts to bring the show back in various forms. In 1989 they brought Barbara Feldon and Don Adams back for Get Smart Again, and in 1995 another attempt to bring it back as a weekly series on Fox failed, this time with Adams playing an older Smart with the focus being on his son played by Andy Dick (yep…ack).

The original series was funny for it’s time, but relied mostly on silly humor derived from the bumblings of the inept Maxwell Smart. It hardly classified as “timeless,” but was the first real poke at the spy genre that had come to popularity with the James Bond series.
So, back to my original head scratching, why bring back a dated, half-remembered series that’s already had multiple failed attempts at revival…a series that 9 out of 10 under 30s on the street probably don’t even remember? The best I can guess is that they figure that if they have Steve Carell, they can pull from his fan base, Ann Hathaway can give it some steam, and the franchise name of Get Smart can pull enough the 40+ crowd to pull this crap together to turn a little profit. They probably will, but it will be mostly on the draw of Carell.

The movie itself is pretty innocuous. It’s not awful. It’s well made, has a handful of decent laughs, a few competent action sequences and some rather nice performances all around. Carell is a consummate professional, so if there is any humor to be had in a script, he’ll work his ass off to mine it out, and he does a pretty good job. The other gem of a performance is Alan Arkin as the Chief of CONTROL (blah blah blah, if you need the background, CONTROL and KAOS where the metaphors for the CIA and the KGB back in the original series). In any case, Alan Arkin is always good, consistently one of the most entertaining performers in film, even when he’s waist deep in shit. In this case, he’s not waist deep in shit, but manages to shine. Anne Hathaway, who plays Agent 99 gives a stellar performance…well, stellar when she’s not speaking and if you are a heterosexual male or homosexual female watching.
As an actress, she is mind-boggling average, but if there were a film released this week that was 90 minutes of Hathaway modeling different outfits and giving different sultry poses, I’d be there for the 12:01AM premiere.

I also figure that it’s time to let out my dirty little secret about Dwayne “You can stop calling me THE ROCK now” Johnson. This guy is consistently good in just about everything I see him in. He’s shown good comic timing, decent to solid dramatic skill, but ultimately he has a screen presence and some serious charisma that makes up for deficiencies he may have on the acting side. Don’t get me wrong, it really pains me to say all this because I hate wrestling and get immediately nauseated whenever hear about or see people from the professional wrestling world try to make a film or TV career, but I’ll give it up for Dwayne Johnson. I’ve really kept a little bit of an eye on what he does since The Scorpion King, the modest prequel to The Mummy series. That was a nice little action film and he was really part of what made it pretty entertaining. Worth seeking out if you like films in the order of a Conan or the likes.

In addition, we also manage to get General Zod himself in tow as the villain. Terrance Stamp is basically one of the handful of actors you can cast if you just want to epitomize evil and arrogance on screen.

In any case, all these elements are brought back a well as bunch of pretty cool cameos that I won’t spoil for you, but suffice to say there’s a few. In addition, if you do happen to be one of the Get Smart faithful from the original series, are throwbacks to the original show, thought not overdone. However, the infamous shoe phone does get a shining moment, and there’s at least one blatant cameo from the originally series that will whiff right by anyone not familiar with it.

It’s should be noted that they did put a lot into the action sequences which are generally all very well done and considerably above average. In the end though, during the action sequences I felt myself caring less about that and just wishing that the film was just a little bit funnier.

In the end, I can’t recommend dropping $9.00 - $15.00 a ticket to see this in the theater. What it does have to offer will play fine on TV at home, but it’s worth 90 minutes when you’re flipping around cable in a few months or editing your Netflix queue when the time comes. Ultimately, I find that even if a movie like this doesn’t live up to its potential, if you have any emotional investment in the characters it’s worth a shot. Carell managed to make that happen if only just barely. With the few half-way decent peppered in bits of comedy I didn’t walk out hating it.

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