Get Smart

As a Mel Brooks fan I was pretty damn excited to hear that his 60's sitcom, Get Smart, was being turned into a movie. In my opinion it is the foundation upon which Police Squad/Naked Gun was based.

Sounds like a winning formula doesn't it? A spy version of The Naked Gun based on an old Mel Brooks idea to parody James Bond by taking things to extremes and centering it around one bumbling agent. It is. In fact that description might just jog some people into remembering the reruns of the classic series that Channel 4 used to show on Sunday afternoons, along with Lost In Space and Land Of The Giants. Unfortunately this film never got past the point of sounding like a winning formula. Mainly because Maxwell Smart, aka Agent 86, is played by Steve Carell and the script is totally wrong. Either that or the director had never seen an episode of the series, or any satire, in his life and didn't know how to handle the material.

Maxwell Smart, in the series at least, is basically Inspector Clouseau and Frank Drebbin rolled into one. A complete fool who will make 500 idiotic mistakes before finally, and accidentally, catching the right person. This film dispenses with the idea that Smart isn't very bright (a good pun in itself) pretty swiftly by turning him into a top analyst for CONTROL (it doesn't mean anything) and making this a "desk jockey saves the day" movie instead. Unfortunately that erases most of the original humour and makes his relationship with Agent 99, his "sexy lady spy" partner who really does all the work, entirely different. Rather than having him continually bailed out, and secretly admired, by the object of his growing affections they enter into a "who has the best gadget" pissing contest that also lacks the fun of the comedic scenarios upon which it was based. Fact Fans/Geeks may want to file the following into their Pub Quiz Databanks: Inspector Gadget, as well as sounding similiar to the Maxwell Smart character, was voiced by Don Adams who played the original Maxwell Smart.

So many things are wrong with this film that it's basically a huge unenjoyable joke. Apart from trying to make it more serious they could have got a much better leading man, Steve Carell is just Steve Carell. You pretty much know how every line will be delivered, whether it's what you'd like or not. And the bad guy, Siegfried, is played by Terence Stamp in full-on "I'm just the same character when I'm in these sort of films" mode. The whole thing reeks of laziness. Even the enemies, KAOS (which also doesn't mean anything), haven't been updated from being Russians with nuclear weapons hell-bent on global superiority.

If you want to see the suit, the car and the Clouseae-esqe relationship with the boss then you'll get a glimpse of the suit and the car - the latter has been misplaced down the back of someone's sofa. The alterations (or re-imaginings, as they say in the wood that is holly) really do make this Get Smart in name only, but perhaps they didn't want it compared to the shows and films it influenced. That's a shame because the Police Squad, Naked Gun, Airplane and Austin Powers series' are the kind of things that people will still tune into when they feel like laughing.

If you can sit through this whole film then you'll be rewarded with the only funny scene, Patrick Warburton playing the part of Hymie (a reprogrammed KAOS android from the original series) and delivering some lines that most likely fell off John C. McGinley's latest script for Scrubs. One reference to the series that does work, but only if you know the show, is Bill Murray's short inside a tree cameo as Agent 13. This movie is, unfortunately, pretty likely to get a sequel as there has already been a spin-off dvd (Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control) released in the US.

Get Smart is released on August 22nd, Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control has no UK release date yet.

[poprock]

The Get Smart TV series was brilliant. You’ve confirmed all my worst fears about this movie though.

[pANDAS Radio]

Here's the trailer.

YouTube - Get Smart Trailer

[blondie]

I saw this a few months ago, having never heard of Get Smart before in my puff. I enjoyed it. But then I didn't go in expecting a tribute to Mel Brooks. Its a general rule I like to follow.

[pANDAS Radio]

I wasn't expecting a tribute to Mel Brooks, I was expecting it to at least be like the Mel Brooks series upon which it is based.

[blondie]

Fairy nuff. I just went in with no expectations and ended up enjoying it, thats all.

[Semprini]

It's not a bad movie, but it's nothing spectacular. I enjoyed Alan Arkin though. And The Rock, but that's just because he's The Rock.