Susan Granger’s review of “Get Smart” (Warner Bros.)
First the good news. With his self-effacing demeanor, Steve Carell (“The Office”) is a natural as secret agent Maxwell Smart, originated by Don Adams on the ‘60s TV series.
When we meet him, the Cold War is still on and he’s the most conscientious analyst at CONTROL, the covert U.S. spy agency. While he’s eager to become a secret agent, the Chief (Alan Arkin) wants him to stay where he is. But when Russia’s evil KAOS, led by Siegfried (Terence Stamp) and his assistant Shtarker (Ken Davitian), compromises the identity of all other field agents, Smart is drafted into action as Agent 86, paired by default with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) whose face has been surgically altered.
Encouraged by his friend, superstar Agent 23 (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), Smart plays his hunches and gathers gadgets, including a radar-detector wristwatch and a Swiss Army Knife with a flamethrower attachment and a miniature titanium-threaded grappling hook. He and Agent 99 land in Moscow, infiltrate the lair of Krstic (David S. Lee), despite his menacing 7’2” bodyguard (Dalip Singh, pro wrestling’s The Great Khali), uncover a nuclear arsenal and unmask a double-agent.
So what’s the bad news? The age difference between Carell and Hathaway is a major miscalculation. And while writers Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember base the characters on their sitcom counterparts, the screenplay doesn’t match the cleverness of TV writers Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, nor does Peter Segal’s direction which turns Maxwell Smart into a sincere, sensitive, indomitable fellow, as opposed to Adams’ goofy, accident-prone enthusiast. Yes, there’s the shoe-phone (the earliest cellphone on record) and an updated Cone of Silence. But on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Get Smart” is a silly 6, missing it by that much.
