REVIEW: Get Smart

I have a confession to make. I’ve been looking forward to Get Smart since I saw one of the early trailers and laughed out loud. I also have little to no knowledge of the TV series it’s based on, with the exception of the facts that it was created by Mel Brooks (whom I idolize), starred Don Adams, and probably invented the “spy spoof” genre, along with Man from U.N.C.L.E. Get Smart seemed to be right up my alley: physical comedy, joke-a-minute, and light tone. Walking into the movie, I expected to laugh, but I didn’t expect an engrossing story or characters I’d want to do a study on. I got exactly that.

Steve Carrell stars as Maxwell Smart, a role he was almost born to play. Smart is an agent for CONTROL, a secret government organization whose full-time job is hunting down shadow organization KAOS, whose full-time job it is to be a thorn in CONTROL’s side. Smart is a desk clerk who dreams of being a field agent and, surprisingly, has some natural talent. However, Smart is also naturally clumsy, like Frank Drebin, Inspector Cleuseau, and a hand full of other characters, and this is his defining characteristic. After a mole inside of CONTROL (heeeyyy… what a rhyme, eh? The movie people didn’t think of that!*) trashes the office and leaks the identities of undercover agents across the world, The Chief (Alan Arkin) has no choice but to enlist Smart to sniff out KAOS and foil their evil plan.

If you think you’ve seen this kind of movie before, you have. The plot is coherent enough to keep the film together and moving forward, and really exists only as a vehicle for jokes. That’s not in and of itself a bad thing. I implore you to tell me what the plot for The Naked Gun was? Didn’t think so. But sadly, there’s really nothing here in this movie except for the jokes and Steve Carrell’s performance. Don’t go looking for theme or interesting characters. There are a few tense situations which I appreciate, so the film at least has that. If they didn’t have the airplane scene or the laser trip-wire scene, I might’ve felt gipped out of my 11 bucks. The fact that I did pay that much money to see this movie is kind of a joke in its own right.

There are some cool appearances by Dwane Johnson (apparently shedding his “The Rock” moniker, which is okay now. Enough people know who he is), Anne Hathaway and Alan Arkin. My personal favorite was Masi Oka (Hiro Nakamura from Heroes), who has a lot of potential for comedy if Hiro ever winds up Quantum Leaping his way out of his current series. All these people do their jobs without seeming like they’re rolling their eyes once the camera stops, but it’s Steve Carrell’s show. He leaps into Maxwell Smart with a lot of enthusiasm, bringing the character to life off the small screen. It’s a good performance, but there’s not a lot of innovation here on any level. I was reminded a lot of the first Austin Powers movie, which is okay because Austin Powers is a guilty pleasure for me. Differences between the two films in terms of tone and execution are almost nil, with Austin Powers being a bit more tongue-in-cheek, and having the story device of a fish out of water, which gave me something to latch onto as an audience member. Get Smart doesn’t have either qualities, which means that it will lose people a lot easier if they’re not into the comedy. The question I have to ask myself is would it have been better if the film shot for the moon? In baseball, there are times when a batter has to stop focusing on getting a grand slam and worry about just getting a base hit. With Get Smart, the film just had to work and be funny, which it does fine.

Final Verdict: 3 shoe phones out of 5

There’s a very simple test to take in order to find out whether or not you’ll like Get Smart: watch the trailer. If you laughed, then you’ll probably like the movie. If you thought it was stupid and too over-the-top, then give it the widest birth you can afford. I liked it simply because I thought it was funny, even though some of the jokes were a little hit-or-miss. It won’t be as revered as The Naked Gun, Airplane, or any of the Monty Python movies, but it could get a chuckle out of you. My recommendation would be to either wait for DVD and rent it or take a large group of like-minded friends to go see it. And of the Don Adams franchises, this film is a thousand times better than either of the Inspector Gadget films.