Friday, June 20, 2008

Movie review: Get Smart

Could stand to have gotten smarter, actually.

By John P. Meyer

Get Smart

Maxwell Smart is on a mission to thwart the latest plot for world domination by the evil crime syndicate known as KAOS. When the headquarters of U.S. spy agency Control is attacked and the identities of its agents compromised, the Chief has no choice but to promote his ever-eager analyst Maxwell Smart, who has always dreamt of working in the field alongside stalwart superstar Agent 23. Smart is partnered instead with the lovely-but-lethal veteran Agent 99. Given little field experience and even less time, Smart-armed with nothing but a few spy-tech gadgets and his unbridled enthusiasm-must thwart the doomsday plans of KAOS head Siegfried.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Get Smart

I hate to rain on the nostalgia parade, but there's no point in sugar coating this: Get Smart, Peter Segal's cinematic updating of the classic Mel Brooks/Buck Henry-scripted half-hour comedy TV series, doesn't deliver up the same kind of snarky character-driven yuks as its source material. It's an effective homage, but - from an entertainment standpoint - a sadly uneven one.

Part of what I miss (and, just for the record, I have the chronological qualifications to have missed them) are the snide vocal delivery and consistently blind egotism demonstrated by Maxwell Smart: Don Adams version. The Max portrayed by Steve Carell is a far more human fellow. He appears genuinely interested in the feelings and personal backstories of his associates (and enemies), to the point that one suspicions he'd rather befriend them than tromp on their toes or accidentally shoot them with a dropped automatic.

Arch KAOS villain Siegfried, too - as portrayed here by the great Terence Stamp - lacks the broad comedic stylings and affected accent employed by Bernie Kopell in the TV series. One presumes director Segal decided that a fleshing out of the characters was necessary given the feature-length run-time of the production. I'm not so sure.

Agent 99 demonstrating good pistolcraft

Comparison-based grousing aside, Get Smart has a lot of good things going for it, not the least of which are offbeat and endearing performances by Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) as over-achieving Agent 23; Alan Arkin as The Chief; and - especially - Anne Hathaway as seductive and eminently competent Agent 99, whose silken, long-limbed balletic progression through a room criss-crossed by laser beams may well be the visual highlight of the film. (O.K., let's just say it is, and leave it at that.)

In supporting and cameo roles are Bill Murray (actually, just his head) as lonely, deep-undercover Agent 13; David Koechner as the much-put-upon (not to mention stapled) Larabee; Hero Masi Oka as tech wizard Bruce; James Caan as the clueless U.S. President; Dalip Singh as a Jaws-like bad guy named - um - Dalip; and original Siegfried portrayer Bernie Kopell as "Opel Driver."

As our story begins, Maxwell Smart: Steve Carell version is serving as an analyst for super-secret government spy agency C.O.N.T.R.O.L. The supposedly defunct organization now offices deep under the Smithsonian Institution, ironically (and in non sequitur splendor) just beneath the exhibit displaying Agent 86's old Sunbeam convertible, a pair of his 60's era suits and the infamous shoe phone.

To enter C.O.N.T.R.O.L. HQ, Max must - of course! - pass through a series of steel doors which - while tarted up with new-fangled ratchets, pneumatics and gimbaled hinges - lack the ominous booming-shut quality of their TV progenitors. (Perhaps because the booming noise has been dispensed with. Bad idea, IMO.) The phone booth elevator is also retained as part of the entry routine. CTU ain't got nuthin' on this C.O.N.T.R.O.L. gang.

"Max, that essay on existentialism was brilliant."

As stated, Max is a workaday analyst, and though he's the best and most thorough in the business (his briefing on missing ex-Eastern Bloc fissile materials runs into the hundreds of pages), his aspirations run toward field agentry, as exemplified by his role model and mentor, Agent 23 (Johnson). Shortly after Max passes his field service exam - in part by acing the essay on existentialism, which he left blank ("Brilliant!", enthuses The Chief) - C.O.N.T.R.O.L. is compromised by a mole. Agents around the world are being assassinated, leading to openings for new operatives. Such as Max.

He's teamed with super-sultry Agent 99 (Hathaway, elegantly lethal in patent leather, trench coats and slit-to-the-hilt party dresses - though not all at once) and tasked with tracing the whereabouts of the missing nuclear material. This stuff - in a feat of unexpected (though entirely welcome) verisimilitude - is pronounced correctly by spymaster Siegfried, and incorrectly (as "nucular") by the lamebrain, vocally-challenged pres portrayed by Jimmie Caan.

"I thought those staples were supposed to be non-lethal?"

The hunt for the missing yellowcake (which - appropriately enough - leads our 1/2 of a dynamic duo to a bakery) kicks off the action-packed second act of the film, and by this time we're more than ready to go there - the setup has taken rather longer than audiences geared up for a thrill-a-minute yukfest might have hoped.

In the next hour-ish time period, we're treated to skydiving hijinks, party-crashing undercover work, pyrotechnic destruction of a covert nuclear weapons plant and an epic rooftop bout of unarmed combat pitting 99 and 86 against Dalip (who nets out at about 212).

[NOTE: It was during the filming of this scene that actress Hathaway slammed her leg so hard into a pipe that she exposed her shinbone, leading to a pause in the filmmaking action while she received stitches and cosmetic repair.]

Highlights of this entertaining section include a demonstration of Max's superhuman bladder control, during which he shuts off the flow periodically to catch bits of the conversation being carried on by a couple of foreign agents in the men's room - and then starts it up again when they glance his way suspiciously; and a date-revenge dance sequence in which 99 is tripping the light fantastic with unpronounceable bad guy Ladislas Krstic (David S. Lee), leading the jealous Max to strike back by denting up the dance floor with a partner who turns out to be amazingly light on her size 14 double-wide feet.

She: "Boxers or briefs?"

He: "You tell me."

In the third and final act, Siegfried and his henchmen attempt to extort a large-ish quantity of money ("$20 billion by 3 p.m.") from the U.S. Government, threatening to detonate a big banger somewhere on American soil if they don't pay up. All indications point to Los Angeles, where the president is taking in a symphonic presentation of Ludwig van's Ode to Joy - a tune high up the rotation on Siegfried's iPod.

The action climax - which pits Max and 99 against a C.O.N.T.R.O.L. turncoat and involves a plane trailing an advertising banner, an SUV on autopilot and an approaching locomotive - is as thrilling as anything seen in a James Bond film, if perhaps not as meticulously rendered from an effects standpoint.

Much of the familiar Brooks/Henry TV shtick is present in one form or another, including the numerous catch-phrases ("Would you believe?"; "Missed it by THAT much."; "Sorry, Chief."), the Cone of Silence (in updated electronic form: not as funny as the original Plexiglas) and - naturally - the much-protested, semi-sublimated mutual attraction between our lead agent protagonists. Also front and center is the jazzed-up though clearly recognizable theme music, which lingers in one's head even days after seeing the film. (Aargh.)

In final analysis, Get Smart is a satisfying, if uneven, movie-going experience that would have benefited from more pratfalls, nonsense syllogisms and self-serving snide rejoinders. And less character development.

Sorry about that, Pete.

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