by Morpheus on Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:45 pm
I saw Get Smart last week - I thought it was "ok". I grew up watching the original Get Smart series and they changed the whole tone. The original series was a comedy, the movie was a serious movie with some comedy parts to it. They also got rid of the Max's good luck/bad luck ability (the same one that Inspector Clouseau has in the Pink Panther movies). Basically Maxwell Smart is abit of a bumbling idiot but because of his 'good luck' survives everyting while he gives the bad guys 'bad luck' which causes them to get hurt/killed/caught. This really changes the whole tone. I found Steve Carell to be flat - throughout the whole movie, he was pretty much unemotional and monotone - I laughed a couple of times, but I didn't think he was all that funny. I really liked Alan Arkin as the chief, and Ann Hathway wasn't bad as 99 - although I hated that they reversed the relationship. In the series, 99 liked Maxwell Smart - she was dropping hints, etc, but he was clueless at first. It took him awhile to realize that he liked her too, at which point they both admitted it to each other and they started to date. The Rock - Agent 23 - was kind of annoying, and I figured out that "surprise" earlier. A couple of other agents from the tv series were there (the Bill Murrey character/scene, as one reviewer described as "painfully unfunny" - and I agreed). I did like how they showed the shoe phone and the Max's red sports car in the Control Museum, however the shoe phone was used only once, as was the red sports car - which lasted about 30 seconds - they could have used both alot more in the movie. Finally, they only used 2 of Max's catch phrases and the rest were never used.
In the end, I found the movie to be "ok". Had they gone back to the original series and did a movie exactly like that - then it would have been excellent.