Cyrus Reviews "Get Smart: The Two-Disk Special Edition"

I SO wanted to like "Get Smart" more than I did. All the pieces seemed to be on their proper places on the board. I love all the principles: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin, Dwayne Johnson...so what went wrong? Maybe it was because they hired TV writers, and mediocre ones at that. Maybe it was the director Peter Segal, who had no idea how to make an action film, something Get Smart was at least half-trying to be. Or maybe it was just me.

Nah, it was the movie.

Oddly enough, one of the primary criticisms I kept hearing about this film was one of the qualities I liked best about it. The film’s choice to deviate from the original television version of Maxwell Smart and his blind luck/reliance on Agent 99 and make Smart into someone who a little more human, a little more capable, was a good one. Identifying with someone that utterly incompetent doesn’t come off as funny anymore in this day. See Steve Martin’s portrayal of Inspector Clouseau in “The Pink Panther” remake if you don’t believe me. I get no pleasure from watching a blundering idiot succeed any longer. I certainly got none for the last 8 years watching one claim “mission accomplished” in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

There are some funny bits here, like Alan Arkin’s “Holy shit, holy shit, a swordfish almost went through my head” or the dance-off with Max pulling some improbable moves with a...large woman, but they’re never enough to counter how lame most of this is. The attempts to squeeze in familiar touch stones from the series are laughable only in their awkwardness and the action is lackluster, even though you’d think that with Carell’s more likable Smart the tension would be ratcheted a little higher: is he competent enough to get out of the tight squeezes he find himself in, or will he fail? It’s hard to care.

In the end, despite Carell’s charms as Max, and he plays it as well as the downright unfunny script lets him, you just can’t take your eyes off of Anne Hathaway. She’s always glorious and in these tight outfits slinking about doing spy stuff...hello, new female spy movie series star! Maybe a Janet Bourne or Janeane Bond. mmm. Dig it. Make it happen Hollywood.

Strangely, the “two-disk special edition” doesn’t have much extra to offer, really. Well, maybe. It’s one of those dealios with the ‘press the button on your remote when you see the symbol on the screen for more deleted scenes/outtakes’ but I wasn’t going to sit through this entire thing again just for that. So I honestly have no idea how much stuff they crammed in there. The two featurettes, “The Right Agent for the Right Job” and “Max in Moscow” add up to a total of around 16 minutes and while they show some of the camaraderie between Hathaway and Carell that was the main reason this isn’t a complete waste, it’s also not really that informative either. Still, it was nice for the two of them to get together as, essentially, their characters, and add the little bits of extra stuff here that they did. A completely shameless excuse for Steve Carell to goof off, “Language Lessons”, features him fake-speaking various other languages and it’s actually pretty funny stuff. He’s a natural improv talent and it shows here. Naturally then, the 5 and a ½ minute “Spy Confidential: Gag Reel” has got some good stuff in it. I don’t know what to say about the direct-to-DVD spin-off film “Get Smart’s Bruce & Lloyd Out of Control” as I haven’t seen it, but this set has a short featurette about Masi Oka and Nate Torrence’s characters having their own blundering spy adventure that takes place during the events of the “Get Smart” movie. I learned something from it. I learned that despite any residual gooshy warm fuzzies I might have left over for Masi Oka from the first season (and only the first season) of "Heroes", it's not enough to make me go watch that DVD.

Here’s the final word...I didn’t hate this movie. I actually think there’s lots of promise here and would actually be interested in a follow-up film if they got some decent writers on it. There’s more than enough chemistry here and potential with the smarter-Smart character to make an excellent film. “Get Smart” just wasn’t that film.

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