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Roger Ebert |
The closing credits of “Get Smart” mention Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, creators of the original TV series, as “consultants.” Their advice must have been: “If it works, don’t fix it.” There have been countless comic spoofs of the genre founded by James Bond, but “Get Smart” (both on TV and now in a movie) is one of the best. It’s funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we’d expect from a new Bond movie itself. And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting.
Steve Carell makes an infectious Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but ambitious and unreasonably self-confident agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency in rivalry with the CIA. His job is to decipher overheard conversations involving agents of KAOS, its Russian counterpart. At this he is excellent: What does it mean that KAOS agents discuss muffins? That they have a high level of anxiety, of course, because muffins are a comfort food. Brilliant, but he misses the significance of the bakery they’re also discussing — a cookery for high-level uranium.
Smart is amazingly promoted to field agent by The Chief (Alan Arkin,
calm and cool) and teamed with the beautiful Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway,
who never tries too hard, but dominates the screen effortlessly). They
go to Russia, joining with Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson, once known as The
Rock). Their archenemy is waiting for them; he’s Siegfried (Terence
Stamp), a cool, clipped villain.
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Steve Carell as Agent Maxwell Smart talks into his shoe phone in a remake of the classic TV spy spoof “Get Smart.”
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And that’s about it, except for a series of special-effects sequences
and stunt work that would truly give envy to a James Bond producer.
“Get Smart” is an A-level production, not a cheapo rip-off, and some of
the chase sequences are among the most elaborate you can imagine —
particularly a climactic number involving planes, trains and
automobiles. Maxwell Smart, of course, proves indestructible, often
because of the intervention of Agent 99; he spends much of the center
portion of the film in free-fall without a parachute, and then later is
towed behind an airplane.
The plot involves a KAOS scheme to nuke the Walt Disney concert hall in
Los Angeles, during a concert being attended by the U.S. president. The
nuclear device in question is concealed beneath the concert grand on
the stage, which raises the question, since you’re using the Bomb, does
its location make much difference, give or take a few miles?
It raises another question, too, and here I will be the gloom-monger at
the festivities. Remember right after 9/11, when we wondered if
Hollywood would ever again be able to depict terrorist attacks as
entertainment? How long ago that must have been, since now we are
blowing up presidents and cities as a plot device for Maxwell Smart.
I’m not objecting, just observing. Maybe humor has a way of helping us
face our demons.
The props in the movie are neat, especially a Swiss Army-style knife
that Maxwell never quite masters. The locations, many in Montreal, are
awesome; I learned with amazement that Moscow was not one of them, but
must have been created on a computer. The action and chase sequences do
not grow tedious because they are punctuated with humor. I am not given
to quoting filmmakers in praise of their own work in press releases,
but director Peter Segal does an excellent job of describing his
method: “If we plan a fight sequence as a rhythmic series of punches,
we would have a ‘bump, bump, bam’ or a ‘bump, bump, smack.’ We can slot
in a punch line instead of a physical hit. The rhythm accentuates the
joke and it becomes ‘bump, bump, joke’ with the verbal jab as the
knockout or a joke, immediately followed by the last physical beat that
essentially ends the conversation.”
Yes. And the jokes actually have something to do with a developing
story line involving Anne Hathaway’s love life, the reason for her
plastic surgery, and a love triangle that is right there staring us in
the face. One of the gifts of Steve Carell is to deliver punch lines in
the middle of punches, and allow both to seem real enough, at least
within the context of the movie. James Bond could do that, too. And in
a summer with no new Bond picture, will I be considered a heretic by
saying “Get Smart” will do just about as well?
RATING: 3 1/2 Stars
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Roger Ebert, a Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic, is a syndicated columnist based at the Chicago Sun-Times.
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