GET SMART Review
GET SMART REVIEW
Charles One Sentence Review: Kinda Funny, but didn’t a lot of these jokes stop being funny in 1998?
PLOT SUMMARY:
Bungling secret agent Maxwell Smart, also known as Agent 86 for CONTROL, is on a mission to battle the forces of their evil crime nemesis known as KAOS with his more-competent partner Agent 99, (whose real name is never revealed) at his side. 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 dreams of working in the field alongside stalwart superstar Agent 23. Smart will do whatever it takes to thwart the latest plot for world domination by KAOS. ~imdb.com
Well Steve Carell gets another shot at being a leading man after killing in 40 Year Old Virgin, but then stumbling on the starting block in EVAN ALMIGHTY. I was happy to see Carell playing a likeable character again, that’s what he’s best at…earning the crowds pitty. Carell is the king of being sad, but endearingly cheerful about life. He’s also quite good at playing the smart idiot, although he should he’s cornered the market while working on THE OFFICE. Carell’s MAXWELL SMART is no different. He’s good at what he does, but is a bit bumbling at times. This works for him in many ways, except when it’s used in very cliche ways. GET SMART is pretty funny, not hilarious in any form of the word. The movie is about as cliche as you can get, a lot of the humors been done in any one of the AUSTIN POWERS movies or any of the NAKED GUN movies. Any fan of comedy can see the jokes coming a mile away, but Carell’s puppy dog sensibilties help you forgive him of striking the tired comedy well too many times. The story isn’t something your gonna want to think about to much, although I felt the movie took its story abit too seriously at times and wanted it to be more of a action comedy than just a comedy. The overreaching of the plot and director are a bit strange considering the source material, but I assume they wanted to jazz it up to get the younger people into it. I did like the stuff with CONTROL, although we get far too little time with the background characters(SEE THE DVD SPIN OFF IF YOU WANT MORE TERRY CREWS AND COMPANY). I did like the idea that the spin off dvd was happening at the same time, but if you had no idea about the DVD it could be easy to not really get why certain things and characters show up when they do at CONTROL…the HEMI cameo was one that really could have been skipped in my opinion. Although you can see the big story twist coming a mile away, it’s still entertaining to a certain extent. Missed it by that much.
CHARLES’ GRADE:B
PROS: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway is really hot, Dwayne Johnson when he’s being funny, The background CONTROL cast, the old people fighting
CONS: Not very funny, cliche jokes that where funny back in the 90’s, flawed structure of the set up for the story twist
-“I can’t believe he said we weren’t that funny.”
-“His missed it by that much joke kinda cut me.”
-“Yeah but he did say I was hot.”
-“You really ate that entire Big Bell Box meal before getting on the plane?”
-“Yes…and I now regret it.”
Tipping The Scales 