by Everett Jensen

Created on: July 22, 2008   Last Updated: September 22, 2008

Get Smart
directed by Peter Segal
written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember
starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Terence Stamp, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, James Caan, Dalip Singh

Tears, maybe, but little laughter. This reboot of the original 60's series suffers from severe pacing problems and fails to deliver a single, legitimate laugh. Still, Steve Carell does manage to capture the ridiculous with relative ease and his performance makes this thing watchable.

The story involves the sinister machinations of KAOS and its mastermind, a mad genius named Sigfried (Stamp). See, they want to blow up the world and have taken to stockpiling nuclear weapons and handing them out to numerous unstable dictators. They don't want power, they just want to watch it all go up in pretty, pretty flames. It is up to CONTROL to stop the mayhem and get everyone home in time for dinner. Poor Maxwell Smart (Carell). He desperately wants to stop pushing paper and become an agent but he's considered to good by The Chief (Arkin) and subsequently put on the shelf. However, KAOS blows up headquarters leaving many agents dead and the Chief with no alternative but to send Max out into the fray. He teams Max with the lovely and fiercely talented Agent 99 (Hathaway) and sends them off to Russia.

Now, the first thing that's obvious is that 99 and Max are going to be making babies together quite soon. It distracts from the story because the film makers have to keep reminding us how cute it all is. But it ain't cute. The film also reminds us what a boob Max can be which is essentially what the character is all about. He screws up constantly but somehow manages to do the right thing when he's really facing imminent danger. Screwed up audiences members everywhere are provided with hope that they too might be able to sleep with Anne Hathaway if circumstances were ever to allow it.

There are thrills in this film, particularly the final chase sequence, but they only manage to prove that the narrative lacks any type of urgency. There are scenes that are clearly improvised or at least they seem to lack an impetus to hurry themselves along to get to the action. In a film like this, action is everything and anything else that gets in the way is unnecessary and ought to be extracted from the film entirely. This is why the relationship between Max and 99 seems so egregious. It doesn't further the narrative and merely sets up the conclusion where sunny days are here again and all the good people get to eat their

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