GET SMART

Warner Bros/ Village Roadshow
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B-
Directed by: Peter Segal
Written By: Tom J. Astle, Matt Ember
Cast: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, James Caan, Masi Oka, Nate Torrence, Ken Davitian, Terry Crews, David Koechner, Dalip Singh
Screened at: AMC Empire, NYC, 6/16/08
Opens: June 20, 2008

People under the age of twenty-five probably can’t believe that on the TV series “Get Smart” that began in 1965, a secret agent’s gadget consisting of a shoe with a wireless phone inside was considered a far-out, James-Bond style toy. Remember that as recently as then, a telephone in your car was considered an expensive luxury: few could have conceived that more Americans would own cells today than not. In adapting the “Get Smart” concept for a big-screen movie, director Peter Segal (“The Longest Yard, “Naked Gun 33-1/3”) pays homage to the old episodes created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry which starred Don Adams and Barbara Feldon while simultaneously updating the story to throw in some more gadgets. At the same time, though, Barbara Feldon in the role of Agent 99 for 131 episodes was already a liberated woman who did not defer to Adams’s Maxwell Smart (138 episodes). In a sense, then, the small-screen and multiplex versions are not dissimilar.

“Get Smart” has a lot of action shots filmed by Dean Semler—a low-flying propeller plane threatened with breakup; a car about to collide with a train; some skydiving with and without parachutes; explosions within a bakery; car chases; people chases; gunplay; all punctuated by Trevor Rabin’s pulsating music with breakneck speed encouraged by editor Richard Pearson. But comedy is scripters’ Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember’s primary consideration, the laughs coming out of the situations that the agents of CONTROL find themselves in, while verbal wit is virtually nonexistent. In fact there is just one quip worthy of the term in the entire one hundred ten minutes of the movie, that involving an essay on existentialism that Maxwell Smart has written on an exam that he takes for a hoped-for promotion in the agency.

Steve Carrel anchors the show as CONTROL agent Maxwell Smart, who will turn out to confirm the Peter Principle: “In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” An expert at analysis, he picks up chatter of enemies of the U.S., delivering valuable information to the staff of the clandestine agency. When he passes an exam that should have promoted him to agent, the bureau chief (Alan Arkin) wants to keep him doing what he has been doing, though circumstances change. He becomes a field operative, Agent 86, is teamed up with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), and is no longer responsible for preparing dull reports for Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). The job is to uncover nefarious activities by the head of KAOS, Siegfried (Terence Stamp), suspected of considering sabotage somewhere in the U.S.

The laughs are designed around essentially a series of Saturday Night Live skits involving the relationship of Agent 86 and Agent 99, with Anne Hathaway’s character resenting a man who is brand new to the job and could compromise her safety. After all, she proves herself several times during the story by being able to run with high heels, kick, punch and shoot like the best of the men. Inevitable bickering between the two will give way to sentiment, with Agent 86 finding herself sufficiently attached to her partner that she will presuambly crumble if he is hurt or killed.

As in the James Bond series, gadgets are the co-stars: 86 and 99 appear competitive even in showing off what they’re carrying, the paraphernalia including the shoe phone, a pocket smokescreen, a small flamethrower, a hook, a blowgun; while sports cars formerly seen in the TV series strut their stuff—the Opel GT, the Karmann Ghia, the Sunbeam Tiger. James Caan turns up as our country’s chief executive, a man who is not identified but who cannot pronounce “nuclear” and who falls asleep during a concert of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Not surprisingly, Steve Carrel is the man to watch, his Agent 99 being out of his depth in the field, but unlike The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau sensitive enough to be taken aback by criticism. Bond wannabees have included Mike Myers’s Austin Powers, Dean Dujardin’s Oss 117, and in real life quite a few people in Britain who want to join M16 thinking that they will really be license to kill. There is only one James Bond: his comic imitators on the screen are pale by comparison.

Rated PG-13 110 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online