Would You Believe...?? Derek Flint Is Back With A Review Of GET SMART!!

Merrick here...
Our man Derek Flint is back with a rather well-done review of GET SMART - a film I've been looking forward to, and about which we've been hearing GENERALLY GOOD THINGS. Derek isn't as positive as some have been about the project...nor does he trash it completely. Please keep in mind that the version Derek watched is not a final cut; the film may be tweaked & adjusted before its release next Summer. Read on to see what Derek has to say...
Here's Derek Flint...

Obviously, I love sixties’ spies. No, I don’t mean Roger Moore as a senior citizen James Bond using a walker to run up the Eiffel tower, but those dudes who went undercover during the cold war when the Berlin Wall still had fresh paint: Palmer, Flint, Drake, Number 6, Solo and, of course, Maxwell Smart. I grew up watching repeats of GET SMART and fell in love with it. The coolest thing was it was a real spy show and despite his bungling, Max could always somehow pull it together and save the day. You were always rooting for him. While being a spoof; the character was a legitimate action hero. Don Adams’ indelible portrayal was the reason Agent 86 became a TV icon. Whenever there was daring do, Don was credible as a spy, convincingly throwing punches and handling firearms like nobody’s business. The way Don held a machine gun in the pilot surprised me because he seemed comfortable with it, not like a comedian at all, so it came as no surprise when I watched an A&E Biography and found out Adams had served in the Marines during WW2. GET SMART is probably the most revived TV show of all time. It was a theatrical movie in 1980. A TV movie in 1989. An updated Fox series featuring Andy Dick as Maxwell Smart’s son Zach in 1994. The casting of Dick made the show seem pro-abortion. None of these later incarnations clicked and shared the same deficiency: Brilliant comedy writing, the hallmark of the original show, the brainchild of Mel Brooks & Buck Henry. Now, almost forty years later, for the first time another actor steps into the shoe phone and portrays Maxwell Smart… the talented Steve Carell in a new big screen, big budget remake of yet another classic TV show. The result, directed by Pete Segal, is a mixed bag. None of it particularly original or satirical, just decidedly good-natured and amiable. This GET SMART is pleasant at best, groan inducing and uninspired at worst. Once again, despite a topflight cast and excellent production values, the weaknesses in this new GET SMART come from a mediocre screenplay that cobbles most of its key plot points from Rowan Atkinson’s earlier spy comedy JOHNNY ENGLISH. The screenplay here is credited to Tom Astle and Matt Ember, whose previous movie FAILURE TO LAUNCH had about as many yuks as MUNICH. Astle & Ember, a new age anti-Brooks & Henry, have reconceived the characters of Maxwell Smart and his female sidekick, Agent 99, in a rather bizarre fashion that will leave devotees of the original series perplexed and going WTF? Obviously, Steve Carell isn’t a man of action. In fact, he looks like he’d get winded taking a leak, so his version of Maxwell Smart is a nerdy desk jockey who works as an intelligence analyst for CONTROL. His job is monitoring the activities of a sinister organization known as KAOS, that’s been updated for a post 9/11 world to a terrorist group. Like Johnny English, Carell dreams of being a field operative and looks up to another agent, 23, played by Dwayne “Don’t Call Me Rock” Johnson as a live action video game hero. Rock does a good-natured riff on an action star, but with a undertone that serves as a plot point later on. As if to underscore his outcast status, Carell’s Smart has been battling a weight problem and is a former chubby boy, a Kirstie Alley Goodyear blimp, prone to count his calories and munch on nutritious energy bars. (Whichever studio dolt gave this note should be sent to Abu Ghraib and forced to play nude “Twister” with the other detainees.) After a surprise raid on Control’s headquarters wipes out most of its manpower, the group leader, The Chief, portrayed by a superb Alan Arkin in frustrated authority figure mode, is forced to send an ill equipped, virginal Smart into his very first mission. Once again, this is identical to Atkinson’s ENGLISH. Max is assigned a female sidekick who’s more experienced than him, Anne Hathaway as Agent 99 refigured as a Jennifer Garner kick-ass heroine. Trouble is, Hathaway looks young enough to be Carell’s daughter. When things get romantic, I thought they would set off an Amber alert. The way they attempt to dodge this elephant in the room, as well as explain Hathaway’s inexplicable seniority, is to establish this 99 had plastic surgery to assume a new persona, since the Kaos raid compromised the classified identities of all Control agents. Despite the Grand Canyon age gap, Carell and Hathaway share surprisingly good chemistry. However, scenes where they reminisce on their past discarded lives, intended as character arcs, are ham-fisted and as inept as the main character’s klutziness. Unlike the original show, this GET SMART isn’t a scathing government satire, despite a smattering of limp political jokes, but a standard issue spy comedy. Terrance Stamp portrays Seigfried, who’s nothing like the campy villain from the sixties show after which he’s named. The writing and the role don’t take full advantage of General Zod’s strengths, relegating him to a conventional Malcolm McDowell type bad guy. (Some of the scenes with him reminded me of the Eddie Murphy / Owen Wilson rehash of I SPY, a movie I walked out of… when it was on HBO.) Shtarker, the habitually abused underling, fares much better because Ken Davitian, Borat’s infamous producer and sidekick, plays him. Davitian made film history by performing a nude fight scene that was like “Eastern Promises” in a parallel universe. Here he keeps his clothes on, mercifully, but still garners big belly laughs from his inane expressions and body language. Davitian proves inspired casting because he can make the phone book funny, and that’s about on par with the material he’s been handed. There are laughs in GET SMART, but it’s never hilarious. At best you smile, especially when some gags are seemingly lifted verbatim from the source material. The performers earn their paydays in this one This is a strong, inventive cast and many of their lines and business feels improvised. Given the talents involved, you can bet they probably were. The most successful aspects are the action scenes. Here, Pete Segal surprises as he handles mayhem and destruction with almost John Landis’ bygone brand of signature abandon. These sequences aren’t played for laughs, going for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and BOURNE IDENTITY verisimilitude. However, unlike a RUSH HOUR which mixes action with comedy, the tone of this reinvented SMART sometimes feels as confused as Mitt Romney during a debate. It often can’t make up its mind whether it’s a send-up or a real spy movie, a tone the original show deftly managed. The supporting cast, including brief cameos from the original show and other recognizable faces, are pretty nominal. Without giving anything away, one sequence pays direct homage to the original show and its classic credit sequence. The physical resemblance Carell sports to Don Adams within this stretch is surprising, and also feels like a heartfelt tribute to the man who will always be Maxwell Smart to a generation of people old enough to remember… or just old enough to work a DVD player. There’s also an attempt to establish a “Lone Gunmen” group who offer Smart help . There were times in the film that I wish David Zucker wasn’t wasting his time on those awful SCARY MOVIE sequels and lent a helping hand, as this “Geek Squad” humor had a predictable sitcom feel and didn’t play well. Once again in the story, like JOHNNY ENGLISH, Smart is discredited and must fight to redeem himself. Carell is an incredibly likeable performer and his innate decency is able to infuse the clichéd, by the numbers plot points with some genuine rooting interest. You keep wishing the studio and producers hadn’t chosen GET SMART and instead made an original spy comedy, freeing Carell to come up with a character all his own… as opposed to being once again acting in the shadow of Paul Lynde (“Bewitched”), Ricky Gervais (“The Office”) and Jim Carrey (“Evan Almighty”). When Carell forges his own fresh characterizations, as he did in ANCHORMAN, THE FORTY YEAR OLD VIRGIN and LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, he’s unbeatable. Stop giving this outstanding comic actor sloppy seconds! Anne Hathaway doesn’t fare as well. While a hottie, her Agent 99 derides Smart so much she winds up seemingly castrating him half of the time. She handles action scenes just fine, but isn’t a particularly gifted straight woman or deadpan comedienne. It made me appreciate the underrated work of Elizabeth Hurley in the first AUSTIN POWERS, but that film came up with a matchless update for a sixties spy and the main character was both a retread and a reinvention. This Maxwell is too often milquetoast and a nebbish. Unlike other TV adaptations for the big screen, GET SMART actually builds up a decent head of steam during its third act, a race against time to thwart a terrorist strike that invokes not just the small screen’s 24, but also the prescient seventies classics BLACK SUNDAY from John Frankenheimer as well as TWO-MINUTE WARNING. The reveal of a double agent in the midst of Control comes as no surprise, since it’s the only other character who gets enough significant screen time to be of consequence, but GET SMART ends on a winning note, not unlike the original episodes, with the Chief feeling paternal pride for Max beating impossible odds… including himself. GET SMART isn’t the disaster that many would anticipate, but it’s also not a homerun by any stretch of the imagination. This isn’t the unanticipated fun the first CHARLIE’S ANGELS was. (For one thing, there’s no Cameron Diaz and her “swirling ass.”) This film proves Steve Carell is immensely likeable, but you knew that, and Pete Segal can handle better stuff than the Adam Sandler vehicles he’s been given, and nobody knew that. While GET SMART “misses it by that much,” it does pay decent homage to the original show in many ways, but cannot equal it. The lack of a consistent tone will hinder audiences expecting an outrageous laugh riot in the legendary tradition of classic Brooks & Henry, but it’s not a disagreeable time killer, just not memorable. It's a sold C+ that younger audiences, namely kids, will like more than critics. Despite the big screen pyrotechnics, this is the perfect movie to rent on DVD or watch on cable. Also, as we’re in the midst of a writer’s strike, GET SMART ultimately proves that a big budget, strong cast and unexpectedly agile director can’t overcome a middling script. Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright got it right on the page in HOT FUZZ… and that was while paying homage to crap like POINT BREAK! GET SMART deserves better. Sorry about that. Derek Flint