“Missed it by that much”; one of the many quotable lines from the old Don Adam’s TV show Get Smart and oddly enough the perfect description of the big screen update starring Steve Carell. As a huge fan of the old show I always thought that in this day and age of Beverly Hillbillies and Dukes of Hazard films that Get Smart lent itself to the big screen the better and for the most part the film lived up to that hope.
The film follows the Mel Brooks’ (creator of the TV show and consultant to the film) school of humor for the most part in that it hammers home each and every pun, prat fall, and ridiculous joke over and over again. This approach works with material like Get Smart where we find Maxwell Smart struggling to prove himself on his mission as a field agent. Unlike the TV show where Max was an already established CONTROL agent, the film is more of an origins story. Carell plays his standard charming doofus and seems to play Max in between Michael Scott and the 40 Year Old Virgin. Anne Hathaway is a revelation as Max’s partner Agent 99. Who knew the girl could do comedy? She’s funny and sexy and I love the way the writers explain the age difference between the two romantic leads. The Rock (I refuse to call him Dwayne Johnson) likewise shines as perfect Agent 23. The Rock may be a calculating marketing machine but when he turns in performances like this one its hard not to love him. Alan Arkin nearly steals the show as The Chief and I’ve got to hope he gets even more screen time in the sure to follow (thanks to the opening box office) sequel. There’s great work by the rest of the cast including Terrance Stamp, Masi Oka, and a certain 8 ball jacket wearing son of a bitch in the end.
Still the movie does fall just short of outstanding thanks to a bad joke and an unnecessary length. First off any film that uses a fat suit immediately suffers in my opinion. There’s no need to show us that Max used to be fat. Instead of showing us a picture of Max in his obese days let Hathaway’s reactions and Carell’s talent for self deprecation tell the joke. We certainly did not need a musical montage of him flailing about in said fat suit to Christina Aguilera either. The other short coming came in the long coming, aka the running time. The film runs about two hours and just goes on a little too long. There are some odd pacing lags because of this and it just seems like the film could be so much tighter.
In the end though, Get Smart is a crowd pleaser. The entire theater laughed along and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Is it a “modern classic” (congrats EW)? No, but it’s a fine comedy that does the original material proud and entertains enough to make you want more.
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