| Get Smart |
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| Written by Michael Portantiere | |
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Get Smart Directed by Peter Segal Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember Starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, and Alan Arkin getsmartmovie.warnerbros.com  Steve Carell in GET SMART The disappointment of Get Smart is all the more acute in that the movie sounded excellent on paper. Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, and Alan Arkin respectively play the barely competent Maxwell Smart (a.k.a. Agent 86), the far more adept Agent 99, and the Chief of CONTROL, roles that were so memorably created on the tube by Don Adams, Barbara Feldon, and Ed Platt. Not surprisingly, casting is not the problem here... You can blame this debacle on director Peter Segal, who seems to have no sense of how to make comedy work on film. While you're at it, charge Segal with wasting the talents of Dwayne Johnson (formerly “The Rock”), Terence Stamp, Patrick Warburton, and James Caan, all of whom appear in supporting roles to little effect. Under the debilitating circumstances, it's an amazing and laudatory achievement that Bill Murray manages to be very funny in his one-minute cameo as Agent 13. Screenwriters Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember send 86 and 99 off to Russia, where they battle the dreaded forces of KAOS. There's nothing wrong with the script itself, which contains any number of comic set-ups that might have paid off big-time if another director were at the helm. But Segal bungles almost every chance for hilarity, from Max's use of his shoe phone to the introduction of a rat into our hero's trousers while he's trying to avoid a volley of high-intensity laser beams. And though the infamous “Cone of Silence” is a lot more high-tech in the movie than it was in the TV series, it's nowhere near as funny. Over and above its other flaws, Get Smart suffers from childish gross-out “humor” -- there's a disgusting vomit sequence and two separate instances of paper being stapled to someone's head -- plus a huge dose of violence that's simultaneously offensive and boring. When a movie features an unrelentingly loud, frenetically edited, marathon chase sequence that only has the effect of putting you to sleep, something is obviously very wrong. Given that Carell is the star, Get Smart isn't totally devoid of humor. The man's low-key comic genius is such that he occasionally roused me from my torpor and make me chuckle. But suffice to say that this is one of those supposed comedies where all the laughs are contained in the coming attractions and commercials. You are advised to skip this movie and thereby avoid squandering 12 dollars and two hours of your life. |
