Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

This spy is not a plant.

It’s not often that I can say it with this degree of certainty, but I’m absolutely positive that this guy is not a plant for Warner Bros. He doesn’t work in the film industry at all, actually. He just got out of school and went to work in another field altogether. I’ve known this guy for at least six years. He just happened to go to this screening and sent me a review that is so simple and clean and well-expressed that I’m sure you’ll accuse him of being a plant.

But he’s not.

Which is actually sort of encouraging, because he seemed to really like the film, which I was very unsure about. Maybe this is going to turn out to be good after all...

Hey Moriarty. I just saw an early screening of Get Smart, which comes out in June 2008, and thought I should drop in a few lines about it.

Mind you: although what I saw was a rough cut of the film, so what I saw may not be the final product, although judging from the positive audience reaction, the producers won't need to tweak this action-comedy very much.

Steve Carrell plays the titular Maxell Smart, expert analyst for CONTROL, a top secret organization led by The Chief (Alan Arkin). CONTROL keeps an eye on the terroristic KAOS, led by the cruel Siegfried (Terrance Stamp) and the put-upon Shtarker (Ken Davitian, who played Borat's sidekick producer). CONTROL, like any other organization, has its internal conflicts, here between its flashy field agents like Agent 23 (Dwayne "I don't go by 'The Rock'" Johnson) and its IT/office types like Smart – in fact, Smart would like nothing more than to become elite field agent.

But when CONTROL is devastated by a surprise KAOS attack, it has no choice but to send him into action with the far more experienced Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), who's cool to the idea of teaming up with the dopey Smart. Through his charm and basic decency — even to the bad guys— Smart manages to win the skeptical Agent 99 over despite his constant ability to land himself into trouble.

If this part sounds vaguely like the first Austin Powers movie, you'd be right— Hathaway plays the sort of faux-Bond Girl Elizabeth Hurley played to Mike Myers. But the film isn't about Bond, since its real target is the Mission Impossible movies, with its gadgets and Ethan Hunt's practically superhuman agility and strength, along with a climax that clearly echoes "24." The Chief praises Smart for his skills with human intelligence as opposed to fancy technology, and he gets out of scrapes through his wits, even as the film mixes in a surprisingly strong string of action scenes along the way that make it as much the action movie as the genre its mocking.

The film manages successfully to juggle slapstick comedy with romantic dialog, throwing in the occasional barb at current politics with effective action sequences, all held together by Carrell and Hathaway's basic humanity – both actors have experience playing determined, under appreciated underdogs that make good, and both add chemistry to a crowd-pleasing film.

The film is overall an impressive mix of action and comedy.
Vertov