Get Smart

Based on the 1960s Don Adams series, Get Smart casts Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart – an intelligence analyst whose dreams of working in the field are finally realized after several agents are either exposed or killed at the hands of a megalomaniacal super-villain (Terence Stamp’s Siegfried). Director Peter Segal has infused Get Smart with a bland, hopelessly hackneyed sensibility that’s reflected in the majority of its undeniably tedious action set-pieces, as the filmmaker – working from Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember’s screenplay – places a consistent emphasis on interludes of an exceedingly familiar and downright tired nature (ie Smart must make his way through a perilous laser grid). The decision to shoot on digital equipment only exacerbates the movie’s decidedly low-rent feel, with the absence of film especially apparent during the myriad of underwhelming action sequences – thus draining such moments of the excitement they’ve clearly been designed to generate. Far more problematic, however, is Carell’s surprisingly ineffective turn as the central character; in his efforts at aping Adams’ distinctive take on Maxwell Smart, Carell offers up a stiff, oddly unnatural performance that becomes increasingly difficult to overlook as the movie progresses (a miscast Anne Hathaway fares just as poorly as Smart’s tough-as-nails partner). And while there are a few admittedly humorous segues sprinkled here and there – ie Smart’s queasy trip aboard a jet – Get Smart primarily comes off as a manufactured piece of work that’s been geared towards the lowest common denominator.

** out of ****