Film Review for Get SMart
The closing credits of Get Smart mention Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, creators of the original TV series, as “consultants.” Their advice must have been: “If it works, don’t fix it.” There have been countless comic spoofs of the genre founded by James Bond, but “Get Smart” (both on TV and now in a movie) is one of the best. It’s funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we’d expect from a new Bond movie itself. And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting.
Steve Carell makes an infectious Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but ambitious and unreasonably self-confident agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency in rivalry with the CIA. His job is to decipher overheard conversations involving agents of KAOS, its Russian counterpart. At this he is excellent: What does it mean that KAOS agents discuss muffins? That they have a high level of anxiety, of course, because muffins are a comfort food. Brilliant, but he misses the significance of the bakery they’re also discussing — a cookery for high-level uranium.
Smart is amazingly promoted to a field agent by the Chief (Alan Arkin, calm and cool) and teamed with the beautiful Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway, who never tries too hard but dominates the screen effortlessly). They go to Russia, joining with Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson, once known as The Rock). Their archenemy is waiting for them; he’s Siegfried (Terence Stamp), a cool, clipped villain.
And that’s about it, except for a series of special-effects sequences and stunt work that would truly give envy to a James Bond producer. “Get Smart” is an A-level production, not a cheapo ripoff, and some of the chase sequences are among the most elaborate you can imagine — particularly a climactic number involving planes, trains and automobiles. Maxwell Smart of course proves indestructible, often because of the intervention of Agent 99; he spends much of the center portion of the film in free-fall without a parachute, and then later is towed behind an airplane.
The plot involves a KAOS scheme to nuke the Walt Disney concert hall in Los Angeles during a concert being attended by the U.S. president. The nuclear device in question is concealed beneath the concert grand on the stage, which raises the question: Since you’re using the Bomb, does its location make much difference, give or take a few miles?
It raises another question, too, and here I will be the gloom-monger at the festivities. Remember right after 9/11, when we wondered if Hollywood would ever again be able to depict terrorist attacks as entertainment? How long ago that must have been, since now we are blowing up presidents and cities as a plot device for Maxwell Smart. I’m not objecting, just observing. Maybe humor has a way of helping us face our demons.
The props in the movie are neat, especially a Swiss Army-style knife that Maxwell never quite masters. The locations, many in Montreal, are awesome; I learned with amazement that Moscow was not one of them, but must have been created on a computer. The action-and-chase sequences do not grow tedious because they are punctuated with humor. I am not given to quoting filmmakers in praise of their own work in press releases, but director Peter Segal does an excellent job of describing his method: “If we plan a fight sequence as a rhythmic series of punches, we would have a ‘bump, bump, bam’ or a ‘bump, bump, smack.’ We can slot in a punchline instead of a physical hit. The rhythm accentuates the joke and it becomes ‘bump, bump, joke’ with the verbal jab as the knockout or a joke immediately followed by the last physical beat that essentially ends the conversation.”
Yes. And the jokes actually have something to do with a developing story line involving Anne Hathaway’s love life, the reason for her plastic surgery, and a love triangle that is right there staring us in the face. One of the gifts of Steve Carell is to deliver punchlines in the middle of punches and allow both to seem real enough at least within the context of the movie. James Bond could do that, too. And in a summer with no new Bond picture, will I be considered a heretic by saying “Get Smart” will do just about as well?
Wrong Mission
“Get SMART” is a film mistaken about its own identity. As a reworking of one of the great 1960s TV comedies, you’d think being funny would be its main goal. But you would be wrong. Very, very wrong.
Like its protagonist, in-over-his-head secret agent Maxwell Smart, “Get Smart” yearns to be something it’s not. Unaccountably eager to walk in the footsteps of James Bond, “Get Smart” neglects the laughs and amps up the action, resulting in a not very funny comedy joined at the hip to a not very exciting spy movie. Talk about killing two birds with one stone.
Making it all that much more perplexing is that the original show, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry and starring the exquisitely earnest Don Adams as Agent 86 and Barbara Feldon as the soignee Agent 99, seemed so effortlessly funny.
Screenwriters Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember (credited on the unremarkable “Failure to Launch”) have brought back many of the trademarks of the TV series, including the iconic shoe phone, robot agent Hymie and the dreaded Cone of Silence. Perhaps as a tribute to Brooks, they’ve upped the film’s Yiddish quotient as well, with a character named Nudnik Shpilkes.
But for reason or reasons unknown, the filmmakers have decided to retool Maxwell Smart’s personality. Instead of Adams’ guileless ineptitude, Steve Carell, normally an exceptionally funny individual, has been encouraged to play Agent 86 as someone who is actually moderately capable. The actor insists in the media notes that he wanted to avoid impersonation and “tap into the essence of the character,” but whatever you call it, it’s not very amusing.
Compounding this problem is “Get Smart’s” determination to turn itself into what the studio is calling an action comedy. That means multiple fight scenes, several fiery explosions and a multitude of stunts, including an elaborate car-plane chase and a multi-person parachute jump without enough chutes. Are you laughing yet?
Unfortunately, director Peter Segal, a graduate of the Adam Sandler School for Comedy (“The Longest Yard,” “50 First Dates” and “Anger Management”) is incapable of making any of this action play other than perfunctory. Nor is he any better attempting to forge, no kidding, a genuine emotional connection between Smart and Agent 99 (a game if overmatched Anne Hathaway). Now why didn’t Buck and Mel think of that?
It’s almost inevitable that the film’s humor causes the occasional smile, but “Get Smart” misfires in that area more often than it hits. Especially inept are attempts at up-to-the-minute political satire, including a painfully miscast James Caan as a president thuddingly modeled on George W. Bush.
As to “Get Smart’s” actual plot, it is nothing more than a knockoff of standard issue spy material centering on the concept that the TV show’s rivalry between the evildoers of KAOS and the good guys from CONTROL continues to this day.
Like “Ironman,” this is also an origins story of sorts, showing us how desk-bound analyst Smart, who always yearned to be a field operative like the legendary Agent 23 (a relaxed and funny Dwayne Johnson), finally gets his chance and teams with the more experienced Agent 99.
Together these two travel to Russia, hot on the trail of KAOS honcho Siegfried (a bored Terence Stamp) and stolen nuclear material. Everyone ends up in Walt Disney Concert Hall, a plot turn that offers the opportunity for some fine aerial shots of the building but little else.
Because of its determination to put pro forma action ahead of everything, “Get Smart” doesn’t do enough with the comic abilities of several people, starting with Carell. Alan Arkin doesn’t get a chance to be more than adequate as CONTROL’s leader, and Ken Davitian, who played Borat’s sidekick, isn’t as funny as he should be as a Siegfried associate. Coming off best, perhaps because his role is tiny, is Bill Murray as tree-bound Agent 13.
Still, one has to wonder what the late Don Adams, one of the people the film is dedicated to, would have thought of this concoction. If you’ve never experienced the pleasures of the original yourself, it’s fair to say that brief clips available free on YouTube provide more laughs than this entire benighted enterprise.
Get Smart (2008)
Directed by: Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Terry Crews, David Koechner, James Caan, Masi Oka, Nate Torrence, Patrick Warburton, Ken Davitian, David S. Lee
Screenplay by: Tom J. Astle, Matt Ember
Production Design by: Wynn Thomas
Cinematography by: Dean Semler
Film Editing by: Richard Pearson
Costume Design by: Deborah Scott
Set Decoration by: Suzanne Cloutier,Paul Hotte, Leslie E. Rollins
Art Direction by: Christopher Burian-Mohr, Martin Gendron
Music by: Trevor Rabin
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some rude humor, action violence and language.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: June 20, 2008
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