"Get Smart," which began its life on TV as a classic sitcom that cleverly satirized Cold War espionage, has been transformed for the big screen into just another standard action picture.
Pity, too. Because Agent Maxwell Smart himself would have made a more entertaining movie, just by picking up a camera and bumbling his way through it.
You certainly can't complain about the casting of Steve Carell in the lead role: What other actor has the buttoned-down looks and self-deprecating sense of humor to fill Don Adams' shoe phone?
Carell's Smart is a good guy -- hardworking, earnest, desperate to prove he's ready to be promoted from behind the desk as an analyst to the challenges of working as a field agent. While it's true that doing a dead-on impression of Adams would have seemed campy and fallen flat, this characterization misses the point, too. The combination of self-seriousness and ineptitude is what made Maxwell Smart a comic icon. No one involved with this movie seems to get that.
In this screen version, Smart and the glamorous, capable Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway, kicking far more butt than Barbara Feldon ever could have imagined) find themselves in a series of increasingly elaborate, explosive scenarios (hanging from a plane, being dragged behind a speeding SUV, dodging a train). It all plays out in big, loud, obvious fashion -- as if the filmmakers figured the audience wouldn't be interested in the sort of sly absurdity that gave the show its original charm.
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