Monday, July 20, 2009

Get Smart (2008)

"Get Smart" is a goofy-fun spin on the TV classic, with the hilarious, deadpan Steve Carell taking over for the late Don Adams. The plot is the same: Agent 86 Maxwell Smart works for Control, a top-secret U.S. government spy agency tasked with defeating the evil conglomerate Chaos. Here, Smart is teamed with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway, also dead pan funny) to hunt missing nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.

The investigation and hunt is peppered with the same slapstick comedy, tongue-twister jokes and bawdy humor that made the show wildly funny, including a scene where Smart wakes up after an accident and discovers that 99 has dressed him in a tuxedo, and traded his briefs for boxers. The action is bigger here than the TV show, but most of it manages to stay in the shadow of comedy.

Alan Arkin steals the film with just a few scenes where his old guy plays tough, or nearly dies at the end of a swordfish. Terence "Kneel before Zod" Stamp plays the villain, perfectly menacing and hilarious. James Caan appears as a U.S. president who can't quite pronounce "nuclear" and continues reading a book to children during a national disaster. B

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