Review by Brian Tallerico

Do you think it took this long to bring Get Smart to the big screen because producers knew the potential for title-based anti-quotes was just too easy? Just let me get this out of my system - "'Get Stupid' is more like it!" "There's nothing 'Smart' about it!" "It wouldn't be too 'Smart' to 'Get' tickets for this one!" Whew. Sorry about that. The sad thing is, despite being hilariously catchy, every one of those Shalit-esque quotes is true. Get Smart can definitely be thrown onto the dung heap of comedy that has been 2008, above total junk like Meet the Spartans, Over Her Dead Body, and The Love Guru, but well below anything respectable. (Wait. Have there been any "respectable comedies" this year? It's been rough.) Get Smart is only mildly redeemed by two performances and just by being so forgettable that it's too dead-on-arrival to be offensively bad.

Steve Carell steps awkwardly into Don Adams' legendary shoes as Maxwell Smart aka "Agent 86". Smart works for the legendary government agency, CONTROL, a covert group of spies who protect the world from their arch-nemesis CHAOS, a covert group of baddies. Smart is the assistant to the Chief (Alan Arkin) and dreams of actually one day getting into the field like the legendary, chisel-jawed "Agent 23" (Dwayne Johnson). After CONTROL is sabotaged and the identity of its operatives is compromised, the Chief is forced to promote Smart to Agent status and bring in the famous (and recently under the knife) "Agent 99" (Anne Hathaway) to be both Smart's partner and in-the-field babysitter. Smart may stumble and bumble, but his heart is always in the right place, something even the experienced 99 eventually comes to learn. 86 and 99 head to Russia to track down a notorious criminal (Terence Stamp) who has a Dr. Evil-esque plan to hold the world hostage, which, if that sounds familiar, that's because it is. But can the combined team of 185 (86 plus 99) save the world? Or, more importantly, can they make you laugh?

It turns out that the last question is the hardest. Even by today’s standards, Get Smart is surprisingly dull. The zest and energy from the original show is completely missing. There are only two or three real laughs in the entire piece, and they're courtesy of the only actor who seems to be having a good time, Alan Arkin. Carell, in particular, is shockingly bland, bringing none of the old-school charm that Adams did to the character. On paper, Steve didn't seem nearly as miscast as Hathaway, but she actually fares better in the final product. She's got the looks and the style to make the action scenes more believable, even if she has next-to-zero chemistry with Carell. She might actually make a decent action heroine someday. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag with Johnson coming out typically "okay," and Heroes' Masi Oka finding himself a part of one of the more annoying comedic duos in a long time. The filmmakers also string together a very unusual hodge-podge of cameos, including Bill Murray and Kevin Nealon in two-to-three line roles. A couple of them work (one from the original show and the last one in the film), but they're more distracting than anything else. Especially given Carell's lackluster performance, the cameos only make you wish that actors like Murray would have hung out for another scene or two.

But the actors aren't really to blame. It's the script. The screenwriters never clearly decided whether or not to do a straight-up homage to the original show or to bring it into a new era - so they did neither. Spy movies and good comedies have an energy to them that's missing from Get Smart. There's a reason that they don't make action comedies that often any more. Isn't Octopussy funny enough on its own? Only moviegoers with the most extreme tolerance for action comedy, those who miss the Police Academy franchise or wonder why they never made a sequel to The Man Who Knew Too Little, will find something to like about Get Smart.

Rating: ONE AND A HALF BONES

Release Date: June 20th, 2008

Rating: PG-13

Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Terry Crews, David Koechner, and James Caan

Director: Peter Segal

Writers: Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember