Get Smart

If you go back to my pre-summer movie blast, you will see that this movie made my top 10 list of movies I was really anticipating. The teaser was super hilarious and as more trailers rolled out, I was hooked. It looks super funny and super action packed. I thought Steve Carrell was perfect casting for Maxwell Smart and I love Dwayne Johnson. Get Smart was my dad's favorite show and I have seen enough of them to know how it is funny and seen it enough to want to see this movie.

Maxwell Smart(Carrell) is the best analyst at CONTROL. He passes the field agent exam, but the chief (Alan Arkin) needs him to be the best analyst. CONTROL is a top secret Government agency that keeps tabs on terrorist threats, mostly from a group called CHAOS. CONTROL is hit hard and all of their field agents are found out and killed. Thus, Smart is promoted and he will be teamed up with Agent 99(Anne Hathaway), a veteran agent who recently had undergone plastic surgery. Smart and agent 99 head off to Russia to track down some possible nuclear threats. Back stateside, agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson) is having trouble adjusting to being a desk agent but is trying to be as helpful as possible.

The movie is not heavy on plot, but it is heavy on silly jokes and gags that hit much more often than they miss. Carrell is the absolute perfect bumbling straight man and the scene of him in the airplane bathroom left me in stitches. His line delivery is pitch perfect and he really has the qualities to carry a Get Smart franchise, if that should happen. The jokes work, the action is almost nonstop as we get a fight in mid-air and then an awesome climax involving an airplane, a train, a few cars and a bomb. Hathaway is sexy as hell and while I am not sure I bought the chemistry between Carrell and Hathaway on the romantic side, they work well on screen together. Johnson, (dropping "The Rock" moniker) gets a lot of great laughs as the newly flustered agent and some of the more supporting characters gets their laughs as well. Get Smart is the kind of movie that just look like it was fun to make; it looks like every day on the set was a blast and it carries over to the audience.

It is not flawless though, as in the middle section it does bog down a bit and the dance off scene does not work as well as it thinks it does. That whole section threatens to derail the movie, but luckily it is replaced by a fight scene with the sexy Hathaway, Carrell and a giant ogre of a man. That fight is thrilling and funny, but the end of the fight when Carrell brilliantly delivers the line "He left us up here; what a douche" really brings the movie back from the tailspin. As an added bonus we get Bill Murray and James Caan in cameos, with Caan playing The President of the United States in hilarious fashion.

As an homage- the shoe phone, the cone of silence, the car, "Missed it by that much"- Get Smart works. However, it also works as new spy comedy. It is slick, expensive looking, high tech and funny, but it packs a lot of punch as well. I am sure it will do enough to maybe get a sequel and I for one, am totally for it. It may have its flaws, but the silly comedy works more than it doesn't and I had a really good time watching it.

Final Grade: B-