Media Mix

Get Smart – Another failed TV remake?

After the movie Bewitched bombed a few years ago, and Car 54, Where Are You? made maybe one person laugh a few years before that (I actually don't know – I haven't see either of them), I wasn't sure what to expect from Get Smart. Turning beloved TV shows into movies is risky…But thanks to the cast – namely Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Arkin – Get Smart works.

Carell plays Maxwell Smart, a clumsy-yet-earnest analyst for secret agency CONTROL. After CONTROL headquarters is taken out by its Russian nemesis, KAOS, the cool-talkin' Chief (Arkin) promotes Maxwell to a field agent – Agent 86. He's paired with beautiful and capable Agent 99 (Hathaway) and the two take off for Russia to spy on KAOS agents and (attempt to) stop their anti-American terrorist activities. (The movie doesn't get too heavy into anti-Americanism, but KAOS is planning an attack on the President at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A.)  

Of course Carell delivers some good punch lines, but Hathaway holds her own. The two have a real chemistry and play off each other well. But, not all the jokes connect (I cringed when someone corrected the President with, "It's nuclear"), and some plot elements didn't make sense. Agent 99's plastic surgery back-story and failed romance with Agent 23 (Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson), for example, felt unnecessary.

Besides the expected comedy (and an unexpected cameo from a comedic veteran), there were also some surprisingly well done and fun action scenes.  The gadgets are fun, too, and we can't wait to see how Max will misuse his newest contraptions next – and how Agent 99 will get them out of this one. In the end it's Max's human compassion that saves them both.

Steve Carell plays the Clueless Try-hard well (also as Michael Scott in The Office). He's sort of an idiot, but a funny, likeable idiot, and so we want to see him succeed. And he does.

Have you seen Get Smart? Tell us if you agree with this review.