Get Smart the Movie

Get Smart, a creation of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, was the sitcom answer to James Bond. Spies seem to proliferate during the 1960s, from Napoleon Solo in The Man from Uncle to Bill Cosby's Alexander Scott in I Spy.

But anyone who watched TV in the 1960s has to have a special place in his heart for the stumbling, bumbling Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 of CONTROL, waging the ceaseless shadow war against KAOS with the help of his long suffering (and bodacious) partner Agent 99 and his boss, always known as "The Chief." Through artful use of catchphrases and more than a little luck, Max won the day every week within half an hour, commercials included.

It was natural that idea strapped Hollywood would want to make a movie. Steve Carell puts on Don Adam's shoe phone as Maxwell Smart. In this reimagining of CONTROL for the 21^st Century, Max is still more than a bit of a klutz, but he actually knows more spycraft than his 1960s counterpart could imagine. He starts out the show as a 40 something analyst who really wants to go out in the field.

When he gets his chance to after KAOS, which is selling stolen nukes to certain unstable third world countries, he is paired with 99, this time played as a bodacious butt kicker by Anne Hathaway. Alan Arkin fills in as The Chief. Dwayne Johnson, the artist formally known as The Rock, plays a tough Agent 23.

The movie plays a little bit to its television roots, with a new, but not very much improved Cone of Silence and a plot by a couple of geeks from CONTROL's version of Q Branch including Heroes' Masi Oko to replace all of the field agents with versions of Hymie the robot. And Carell gets to do each of the signature one liners.

But Get Smart the movie shines best when Carell's Max and Hathaway's 99 establish their chemistry. 99 is resentful, at first, about being paired up with a klutz. But, in the movie style, she slowly, but surely begins to appreciate his qualities.

Terence Stamp understates his role as KAOS chief Siegfried. He has the best one liner in the movie, about how sad he is that Los Angeles has to be blown up to convince CONTROL of the seriousness of their situation, along with all of those movie stars.