Wise up and steer clear of Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway's 'Get Smart'


by James Sanford | Kalamazoo Gazette
Thursday June 19, 2008, 10:58 AM

It used to be that when TV shows ended their runs on the networks, they went off to rerun heaven or -- in the days before 500-channel cable systems -- simply disappeared, never to be seen again.
The big-screen adaptation of GET SMART makes you nostalgic for those days.

Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway play spies working for a top-secret agency in GET SMART.

SMART brings together an enviable ensemble of first-class comic actors (Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin, etc.) and burdens them with a fifth-rate screenplay that feebly attempts to update the 1960s spy spoof created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

The 1960s SMART was designed as a parody of the James Bond blockbusters. Brooks and Henry's high-concept hook: What if James Bond was dweeby instead of debonair? That was enough to keep the show running for five years, with Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, the CONTROL agent who stumbled through mission after mission in his battle to defeat the dark forces of KAOS -- incidentally, neither acronym stood for anything -- and save the world.

Although Carell bears a slight physical resemblance to Adams, his characterization of Smart has less to do with Adams' style of comedy than it does with Carell's own TV role as Michael Scott, the eager but generally incompetent manager on "The Office." Carell's strongest performances (DAN IN REAL LIFE, THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN, ANCHORMAN) have allowed him to exercise his gift for out-of-left-field spontaneity, but SMART is so consumed with sloppily staged fights, chases and scenes of destruction that it keeps its star in a straitjacket.

The same is true of Hathaway, whose natural effervescence is barely glimpsed here. As Agent 99, the unwilling mentor of Smart, she's called upon to do little more than look pretty, play it cool and occasionally get smacked around by the bad guys.

Perpetually wavering between slapstick, gross-out gags and sometimes harsher-than-necessary violence, director Peter Segal (THE LONGEST YARD) can't even find a consistent tone for the story. SMART churns along from scene to scene without building any comic momentum, suspense or charm. Even cameos by Bill Murray, Patrick Warburton, Kevin Nealon and James Caan can't give this flaccid farce a boost.

"Missed it by that much" was one of the catchphrases popularized by the original GET SMART series; "missed it by a mile" is an apt description of this retread.

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