At first glance, the casting of Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart seemed a smart choice. I couldn't think of anyone else who could revive the cocky idiot savant that Don Adams had created back in 1965. Adams' Maxwell Smart was created to satirize the wildly popular spy films of James Bond. Adams played the inept, bumbling and perpetually confused yet unexpectedly successful Agent 86.
The new film begins with Maxwell Smart (now played by Steve Carell) entering a museum dedicated to CONTROL. This suggests that the intelligence organization has becomes a relic of America's Cold War past. It also serves as an homage to the original series as we find the now iconic shoe phone, cone of silence and the original Agent 86's Sunbeam sports car. But of course CONTROL hasn't really gone the way of the dinosaur. We quickly discover that the Washington-based intelligence agency still exists in the bowels of the city and Smart (Steve Carell) is one of it's top analysts.
Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in Get Smart (Warner Brothers)
The beginning of the film, rather than picking up on the old show, plays out instead like an origin tale, you know like Batman Begins . How did Smart become Agent 86? And that would be okay if it turned out to be either funny or clever. But in the hands of director Peter Segal, and writers Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, the first half of the film falls painfully flat and barely stirs a giggle. But then none of the these people can boast any successful comedy experience on their resumes. The writers penned the lame Failure to Launch and Segal has such lackluster credits as 50 First Dates, Anger Management, and The Nutty Professor II to his name. None of these works display even a hint of the comedic skill necessary to pull off a successful or inspired remake of a classic like Get Smart . I grew up with Get Smart and I'm sure my affection for the original series plays heavily into my disappointment with the new film. But my 15-year-old son, who had never watched any of the original TV show, also left the theater unimpressed.
Original creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry are listed as consultants on this big screen Get Smart but their duties must have consisted of them taking home a paycheck and smiling at the fact that they are still making money off of a loopy idea they had more than four decades ago. Their credit seems more like a publicity ploy to make it look like the original creators have given this remake their blessing rather than because they actually provided any creative input to the film. The main problem with this remake is that it doesn't know if it wants to imitate the style of the original show or break free and create something wholly its own. The result is an awkward straddling of the two.
Terence Stamp plays KAOS' Siegfried in Get Smart (Warner Brothers)
The new Get Smart fails to find its own new voice, but it does finally score some laughs when it succumbs to imitating the style of the original. So while I don't think I laughed once during the first hour of the film, I started to warm toward the comedy as it got sillier. The turning point for me was when Smart meets KAOS leader Siegfried (Terence Stamp) and engages in a classic Brooksian exchange of "if I was a CONTROL agent you would be dead... no if you were a CONTROL agent you would be dead... no you would be dead... no you..." Well you get the idea. At that point, the new Get Smart started to embrace the inspired stupidity of the original show and the laughs started to flow. The film is most enjoyable when it's at its silliest. So entering a secret office by walking on water and pressing a fake duck is much more in line with the original show's comic sensibilities than the hi-tech special effects are. In fact the slicker the film tries to look and the bigger the effects are, the less it succeeds. Get Smart was all about the fun of low-tech gadgets like the shoe phone. In some ways the $80 mil budget of the new film is a hindrance. A smaller budget that would have forced the filmmakers to draw on more creativity would have probably served the comedy better.
The genius of the original show was that it was unabashedly stupid but in a clever way. I imagined that Mel Brooks came up with the absurd and generally stupid (and I mean stupid in a good way) gags and then Buck Henry gave them a little edge or cleverness. They were the perfect comic yin and yang. Maybe I'm wrong but I always thought that was what made the series work. Don Adams' Maxwell Smart, like Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau, was a confident idiot who drove his superiors crazy because things always went right but for all the wrong reasons. Smart's major asset was sheer dumb luck. Talent or intelligence was rarely involved. (Although the skillful Agent 99 was always an asset.) That was the comic innovation of those characters - idiots who succeeded.
But in the new film Carell and company don't want Smart to be dumb. They go out of their way to point out that Smart is a brilliant if rather pedantic analyst, and Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon in the TV show and Anne Hathaway in the new movie) is constantly surprised by his clever maneuvers in the field. Even the Chief applauds his efforts and reveals that the only reason he doesn't promote Smart to field agent right away is because he values him too much as an analyst. Where's the humor in this approach to the character? Carell's Smart is even used to spew politically correct messages about seeing our enemies as human beings. That just doesn't fit here.
Carell manages to deliver many of Smart's classic lines from the series: "sorry about that chief," "missed it by that much," and "would you believe." But he delivers these lines more out of duty than fun, and they no longer have the comic zing they had in the TV show. (Missing or else they passed me by are the classic lines: "The old [fill in the blank] trick!" and the accompanying "That's the [fill in a number] time I've fallen for it this month!" Or the "I asked you not to tell me that.") In some ways, the tone of Carell's character in the TV show The Office seems more in line with the comic style of the original Get Smart. The film's failure to effectively tap into Carell's comic talent is a shame because I think Carell has the comedic style to pull off the brash stupidity of Maxwell Smart.
Alan Arkin if the Chief and Anne Hathaway is Agent 99 in Get Smart (Warner Brothers)
The film does boast some clever casting and nice cameos. Bill Murray is hilarious as unlucky Agent 13 stuck in a tree; the character pays homage to the agent played by Dave Ketchum who always found himself in mailboxes or washing machines. Similarly David Koechner does a fine job of updating the annoying character of Larabee to the big screen. Bernie Kopell (the original Siegfried) makes a funny appearance too while James Caan scores as a President who can't pronounce "nuclear" and falls asleep at the symphony. Alan Arkin is a great choice for the chief but needs to be more frustrated by Smart. Edward Platt's slow burn as the long-suffering chief was always a high point of the original TV show. (The new film, by the way, is dedicated to both Platt and Don Adams.) Terence Stamp, in a deadpan performance that never cracks a self-knowing smile, is good as Siegfried who can barely tolerate his own inept help. Dwayne Johnson as a buff field agent and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99 are appealing but nothing special.
Get Smart (rated PG-13 for some rude humor, action violence and language) ends with the appearance of the character HYMIE (a robot agent) so a sequel would appear to lurk in the future. But if this creative team sets off on a sequel, I hope they will work a little harder at finding the right comic tone and voice for this silly character. Being stupid isn't as easy as it might look but Mel Brooks and Buck Henry had a genius for that particular brand of comedy.
Companion viewing: Get Smart (TV series), The Nude Bomb, A Shot in the Dark, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
