Get Smart<\/em><\/a> Needs to Get Smarter? \u00a0Get Smart Got Dumber? \u00a0Back to School for Get Smart? \u00a0The options go on and on\u2026 \u00a0If only the jokes in the film had been so numerous.<\/p>\nSteve Carell is Maxwell Smart, a talented, if somewhat overzealous, analyst for the top secret CONTROL, the government agency established to counter KAOS, an international crime syndicate. \u00a0When KAOS infiltrates CONTROL and wipes out most of the field agents, Maxwell receives the promotion he has been longing for and, along with partner Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) he sets out to thwart the threat of nuclear armageddon and uncover the double agent in their midst\u2026<\/p>\n
The main problem with the film is the fantastically small number of jokes that are stretched out and repeated in an attempt to fill up the nearly two hour running time. \u00a0Maxwell used to be fat, but now he isn\u2019t. \u00a0Maxwell loves tedious detail to the point of insanity. \u00a0Maxwell is incompetent when it comes to using his high-tech gadgets. \u00a0Throw in a \u2018Jaws\u2019 (as in James Bond, not the shark) lookalike and you have the film. \u00a0Really, that is pretty much it. \u00a0 Rinse, repeat and hope it is funny the next time around.<\/p>\n
Carell does his best and comes across as an affable fool, but when your character\u2019s defining attribute is that he is dull, you don\u2019t have a lot to play with. \u00a0Anne Hathaway plays it straight to good effect and even Dwayne Johnson hits the right notes. \u00a0But they just don\u2019t have anything to really work with here, let alone poor Alan Arkin playing the agency chief. \u00a0And if you manage to get Bill Murray in your film, please do more than stuff him in a fake tree for 30 seconds of screen time. \u00a0And I know I shouldn\u2019t bemoan the lack of character depth in this one note film, but if you are going to have a double agent (and given the number of people we are introduced to in the film the double agent isn\u2019t exactly hard to spot\u2026) then at least give them a reason to have turned! \u00a0By the time that the inevitable flashy, explosion-filled finale drags itself onto the screen, you just get the feeling that the film hasn\u2019t earned it.<\/p>\n
Get Smart isn\u2019t as over the top as the early Austin Powers movies were, and even if some of the jokes fall flat, the machine gun pace at which they are launched at the screen ensures that you are never bored. It is only fractionally more camp that the Roger Moore era Bond that it seems to take most of its inspiration from. \u00a0Sad to say that the only way to Get Smart is to stay away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed at Chapman University open air screening. I have a problem. \u00a0I am torn. \u00a0Not over my feelings about the film. \u00a0Oh no, my quandary concerns my pun. \u00a0Get Smart Needs to Get Smarter? \u00a0Get Smart Got Dumber? \u00a0Back to School for Get Smart? \u00a0The options go on and on\u2026 \u00a0If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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