Get Smart

[June 18th, 2008]

About an hour into Get Smart, Peter Segal’s big-budget remake of the late-’60s spy-spoof TV series, a KAOS goon, dismayed at his boss’ plan to blow up Los Angeles, voices a concern: “But what about the movie stars? What will we do without their incisive political commentary?”

What indeed? While series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were mostly interested in poking fun at the espionage dramas of the day with Marx Brothers-style nonsense and physical comedy, the Steve Carell-helmed adaptation aims to take on the real-world intelligence community. We see beefy field agents ignoring the advice of analysts, violent squabbles between competing agencies, and a folksy president, totally subservient to his bellicose VP, reading to schoolchildren while the nation is threatened with nuclear annihilation. Ouch.

While it would be silly to argue that Get Smart is anything more than a dumb action comedy—it has its share of gratuitous gross-out humor and Eddie Murphy-caliber fat jokes—with a stock thriller plot, the film has little in common with its slapstick predecessor. Steve Carell is not the heir to Don Adams (whose brand of outright buffoonery is more in line with Ed Helms), though they share short stature and the ability to kill in a nice jacket.

Indeed, Maxwell Smart isn’t the Agent 99 we know at all. He’s, well, smarter—he starts the film as a translator and analyst—and more sympathetic, infused with the same heartfelt humanity that saved Carell’s The Office from devolving to the savagery of its British predecessor. And Anne Hathaway is an Agent 99 for the modern era, meaner, sexier and less willing to serve as a grudging foil to Smart’s gags. She’s a real ass-kicker, a none-too-subtle statement from the producers that this remake wants none of Brooks’ dated misogyny.

The old gags are there, of course: The cone of silence, the absurd gadgets, the catchphrases and even long-suffering Agent 44 all show up. But times have changed, and agents aren’t the only ones with toys. When Smart blows past a peasant babushka in a purloined Ferrari, she whips out a cell phone and snaps a picture. The Cold War really is over, but the idiots are still in charge. PG-13.