Get Smart (***½)

Directed By: Peter Segal (The Longest Yard, 50 First Dates, Anger Management)
Starring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp
Seen: July 5th 2008

***½ Out of ****

It’s been quite some time since I laughed this much in any film. Steve Carell, playing Maxwell Smart, has a great sense of comic timing. Just about every line he delivers and everything he does in this film brings at least a chuckle, and my friends all agreed after seeing this one.

Smart is the top-secret government agency CONTROL’s top analyst, and despite scoring top marks on the field agent tests, his boss, the Chief (Arkin) does not want him in the field, precisely because of his great skill as an analyst for the organization. But as things go, the terrorist agency KAOS, under the leadership of Siegfried (Stamp), attack CONTROL and manages to kill most of their agents. Now Smart becomes Agent 86, and together with Agent 99 (Hathaway) he goes into the field, while some violent agents, such as Agent 23 (Johnson) are demoted to desk jobs.

Quite obviously, Smart is not all that the agency expects him to be, and he inadvertently either saves the day or screws things up for most of the film, with some extremely amusing and funny consequences. After Siegfried reveals that KAOS has distributed nuclear weapons to unstable dictators, the stakes are set even higher, and Smart and 99 have to go after KAOS.

Furthermore, this film is clearly a spoof of the action-spy genre, but you wouldn’t necessarily say it from watching it. This one can put many films specifically made as action-spy film to shame when it comes to stunts and special effects, and these are employed to great effect by the filmmakers. Not for one second does the story and character development take a backseat to special effects and mindless action. This one I definitely endorse, everyone will enjoy the comedy in the dialogue, physical humor, and awkward silences.