Get Smart
I went
into the theater for the Get Smart movie slightly dreading the
experience. After all, Get Smart is my favorite television
comedy ever.
Nearly every TV show turned into a movie has been a serious disappointment.
Most of them have been absolutely dreadful. What are they going to do
to ruin Get Smart?
Well,
it turns out that while Get Smart isn't exactly a great film, it was
a lot better than I feared it might be. It was a reasonable summer
entertainment, sometimes very funny and sometimes not as funny as it wanted
to be. It will never make me forget the amazing series it was based
on, but it was a nice enough tribute to it. And, thank the Lord,
Get Smart is not trolling in the muck with the sorry likes of
Bewitched, Starsky and Hutch, I Spy, McHale's Navy, The Beverly Hillbillies
and Charlie's Angels.
The
first thing they got right was the cast. I'm not necessarily talking
about star Steve Carell, who can be brilliant in his career but also can be
rather hit or miss. (Evan Almighty or Dan in Real Life,
anyone?) He does do a nice job as Maxwell Smart. He won't make
anyone forget Don Adams in the same role, but he is able to mostly pull off
the mixture of seriousness and silliness that is necessary for the part, as
well as the inevitable slapstick.
However, it was a complete brainstorm to hire Anne Hathaway as Agent 99.
She has the perfect mix of all-American sultry looks and comic timing to
make the role a complete triumph. Alan Arkin does not really get
enough to do as The Chief of CONTROL, however he too is a casting director's
dream.
Other
brilliant ideas in casting were Patrick Warburton as Hymie the Robot (who
gets little to do here, but is set up for a sequel), Terrence Stamp as the
head bad guy and David Koechner as an annoying CONTROL agent.
Less
successful are Dwayne
Johnson (the artist formerly known as The Rock) who is just okay as the star
agent and James Caan being overly broad as a Texas President (usually, I'm
all for anti-Bush jokes, but this just doesn't work.)
Get
Smart is full of clever sight gags and grand stunt sequences which make
for a quick and fun two hours.
On the
down side, they do tend to tweak the source material a little too much.
This Maxwell Smart is no longer an idiot savant - a force of good who
stumbles triumphantly into situations with only his unflagging belief in law
and exceptional dumb luck on his side. Instead Smart is a competent if
bookish lab tech who has never gotten the chance to live the exciting Agent
life simply because he is too valuable behind the scenes. He's a bit
of a klutz but has many skills which suit him well in the field.
Thus,
Smart may be a more realistic character, but it slightly neuters him as a
comic force.
The
humor also can get a little unnecessarily dumb - a dance sequence with Smart
and an obese woman at a European manor comes immediately to mind.
However, the pleasant surprise is that the laughs flow a lot more freely and
legitimately than we had any right to believe.
Get
Smart isn't a great movie, but it missed it by that much.
Jay S. Jacobs
Copyright ©2008 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: June 20, 2008.
