Posted on 06/24/2008 6:55:54 AM PDT by yankeedame
June 20, 2008 - by Kyle Smith
Get Smart hits so many wrong comedic notes it’s as if it’s playing the piano in boxing gloves.
A few minutes into the movie, when (a version of) that briskly sinister title theme kicks in and Maxwell Smart heads for the sliding doors you’ll be happily ensconced, thinking: why mess with the classics? But shredding a classic is exactly what the filmmakers set about doing.
The latest big-screen adaptation of the 1960s TV spy comedy, originally conceived as a mashup of James Bond and Inspector Clouseau, completely misunderstands Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell), who in the original was arrogant but childlike, incompetent but unerring. He would say something utterly absurd with ironclad bravado and a stone face, then turn out to be right.
The new Smart is just a whiny nerd who is constantly being beaten down, often by his partner Agent 99 (a brittle and sarcastic Anne Hathaway, who will make you long for the airy adorableness of Barbara Feldon). In their first encounter, 99 literally knocks Max down on the sidewalk, like a middle linebacker.
Carell seems at a loss for ideas. He can’t imitate Don Adams, who played the original role with such dapper daffiness and got many of his laughs just by speaking in an officious quack (modeled after William Powell’s in The Thin Man).
Carell doesn’t do much of anything except project a general air of frustration and weakness.
When called upon to issue the series’ signature catchphrases (“Would you believe…,” “Missed it by that much,” “Sorry about that, Chief”) he sounds sheepish, except on one occasion midway through, which was the only time in the entire movie that I laughed.
Chasing some stolen nukes in Russia (the chief villain is Terence Stamp, aka General Zod in Superman II), Max and 99 go on a series of adventures that aren’t so much parodies of other movies as blurry copies.
There’s a midair parachute chase like the one in Moonraker, starring a hulking actor who looks exactly like the guy who played the steel-jawed assassin in that film. There’s also an interlocking-laser-beam field like the one in Entrapment and a dance scene at a black-tie party a la True Lies.
Instead of parodying these scenes, director Peter Segal (50 First Dates) simply restages them with some cheap har-har element. Example: when Max dances, it’s with a really fat girl. (There are also three different scenes during which we’re supposed to laugh for no other reason except that Carell is shown in flashback in a fat suit.)
Perhaps the worst idea was stealing an idea from the men’s room scene in Austin Powers, which only serves to highlight how much zanier and more original that spoof was.
The script roams desperately around a large ensemble of unnecessary characters in search of a laugh (Masi Oka, of NBC’s “Heroes,” and Nate Torrence, a sort of Jonah Hill clone play two superfluous young nerds who keep dropping in to clog up the movie).
It turns out they are on hand solely to prop up interest in a spinoff movie that is being concurrently released on DVD.
Only in scattered moments is the satiric silliness of the original Get Smart even visible, such as when Smart asks the new character Agent 23 (the Rock), “How was the assassination?” or when Smart meets an agent who is stationed inside a tree. That guy — the sap? — is played by Bill Murray, but instead of playing it straight while discussing the next mission he whines about being stuck in a tree, which ruins the joke.
One key to TV’s Get Smart was that it was deadpan — the characters never knew they were being funny. But the film is full of joshing that’s so witless it sounds like the dull banter of actual locker-room meatheads: fellow agents call Max “Maxi-pad” and “Maxine.”
After a mishap at a bakery, Smart and his fellow spies are derided as “the fabulous bakery boys.” The whole movie is as strange and clunky as that attempted joke. To put it another way, this is the Aughties equivalent of the unspeakable Tom Hanks/Dan Aykroyd version of Dragnet.
The characters cringe at their own failure to be funny, and so do we. As Max tells 99, “Not much of a laugher, are you?”
GET SMART
Directed by Peter Segal
Starring: Steve Carrell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Bill Murray
1 star/ 4
111 minutes/Rated PG-13
Steve Martin is just terrible. The only movie he has been good in for the last 20 years was The Spanish Prisoner.
Hollywood has completely run out of ideas. Get a 1965 TV guide to see what movies are comming out next year.
Who’s going to get the lead in “My Mother The Car - the Movie”?
Get Smart by not seeing the movie.
review: who would believe that an extended shooting and car crash in a Texas town would produce no helpers or armed citizens? No Country for Old Men thought so. It never had any witnesses and everybody was as dumb as a liberal voter. Here, I’ll let you kill me!
I don’t get Martin’s movie choices. Does he really need the money so bad he has to do these awful remakes?
Sorry, I thought we had conversed on this thread:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2030540/posts
Funny, the review makes me want to see it more.. sounds pretty funny.
I liked the Pink Panther with Steve Martin. My kids and I had a pink panther marathon weekend where we watched all of the old movies before going to see the new one.
The Steve martin one recycled so many of the old gags, that we started laughing the second we saw the setup.
This is a shame. I loved the show and looked forward to this film. I'll have to console myself by watching the Police Squad movies again this weekend. Don Adams and Leslie Nielson got portraying the arrogant incompetent down pat.
We conquered the world.
We can take it.
_____
I’m with you.
Bring it on.
Of all the recent releases “The Love Guru” looks like the worst. Any feedback?
Beat me to it. She’s a knockout.
Found the TV series vapid... have no desire to see it rehashed on the big screen.
______
So I guess you were likely no fan of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp either.
I have no idea how I would react today to reruns of Get Smart, but back in the day, I thought the show was a scream. But that kind of stupid humor has always grabbed me (the result of being raised by an exceedingly corny man).
Yes, I saw it with the Movie Gang, but that was because I absolutely put my foot down at Mike Myers latest crap-fest. (The only movies I ever liked him in was the “Shrek” series, maybe because I didn’t have to watch his ugly puss?)
At any rate, the movie wasn’t terrible, and the line about the Hollywood actors and their political views was, I thought, the best line. What bothered me most of all was that, in paying homage to the original series (from the multiple entry doors to the “CONTROL Museum” to the old catch-phrases to Bernie Koppel’s cameo), they managed to mangle every one. Or, to put it in terms that Don Adams would understand:
“Missed it by THAT much!”
Again, it was the best of a bad lot that hit the screens this week, and everything else out there we’d seen, or didn’t wish to see. Personally, I would have stayed home, but the movie gang overruled.
I thought it was funny, did tribute to the series, and well done. I recommend it.
I have not heard anything positive about it. I rarely go to see anything in the theater. I really love netflix because even if it stinks, you don’t feel as bad as if you had spent $10 to see it.
My list of people that I have had enough of includes Mike meyers, Will Farrel, Jack Black, a few I can not think of. Their schtick is getting old. Its the same character repackaged in each film. When they are not the main character but a bit player, they seem to do more memorable roles than when they are the main player.
I really loved the car he had. It was a Sunbeam Tiger, I think.
It was a sweet ride with a big engine.
Many must agree with you...$305 MILLION at the box office; and that is just the domestic figure. Unbelievable.
On of my favorite lines from the original series was Bernie Koppel yelling at his henchmen, “If you don’t get Schmart, the CHAOS Summer Picnic will be canzzelled!”
Always made me laugh when I heard it.
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