Get Smart.

"So, the old turn-a-beloved-TV-show-into-a-hit-movie trick, eh?" David Carr talks with Get Smart's makers for the New York Times, notes that, "For every Mission: Impossible there is more than one Bewitched."

This one's a "pleasant surprise," declares the Voice's J Hoberman. "As directed by Peter Segal..., Get Smart redux is less a parody of a genre that had already passed into self-parody many moons before the TV show was in reruns, and more an all-purpose (and often quite funny) goofball action comedy in which ridiculous banter alternates with slapstick car chases and mid-air stunts."

Updated through 6/20.

Writing for Cinematical, Eric D Snider finds this "one of the better TV adaptations to come along in recent years. It's faithful to the original without being overly reverential, it modernizes the premise without mocking it, and you can fully enjoy it even if you've never seen the TV series. Oh, and best of all - it's funny."

But so far, these voices are the exceptions. "In this distressingly generic spy spoof, it's not Maxwell who's clueless, but the filmmakers," writes Newsweek's David Ansen.

"Since original series creators Mel Brooks and Buck Henry are credited as 'consultants,' I like to envision them nodding noncommittally as they cashed their checks," writes Bill Weber in Slant. "No matter how many cute nods to the TV show they wedge in (the shoe phone, [Don] Adams's catchphrases, putting Hathaway in a bobbed wig that recalls the purring, witty 99 of Barbara Feldon), the makers of this Get Smart have essentially cranked out a dull slam-bang spectacle where laughs are tertiary. The reaction of a nostalgic Boomer who's witnessed a childhood favorite pissed on? Well, that's easy for you to say..."

"Yeah, TV show this, TV show that, but what use are the external signifiers without the sensibility that birthed them?" asks the L Magazine's Mark Asch.

At the SpoutBlog, Christopher Campbell lists "10 Movies That Made Get Smart Obsolete."

Lynda Gorov talks with Anne Hathaway for the Boston Globe.

Updates, 6/19: Robert Abele profiles Alan Arkin for the Los Angeles Times.

"At least [Steve] Carrell and Hathaway are well cast," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "Get Smart tempts one toward the cynical thought that summer entertainment is deliberately meaningless. Should Hollywood ever grow up, Carrell and Hathaway would be ideal for another remake: God forbid it's TV's Moonlighting, but how about The Thin Man?"

James Rocchi talks with Arkin, too - for Cinematical.

Alonso Duralde has some advice for Carell: "Stay classy."

Updates, 6/20: "Reviewing a movie like Get Smart is pretty much like writing about the new packaging of a laundry detergent," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "The box may be a brighter orange, the label a little louder (Improved! Kind Of!), but the stuff inside is pretty much the same as the stuff inside every box of detergent. And, in this case, the stuff inside consists of exactly what most Hollywood movies based on old sitcoms are made of, namely feeble and funny jokes, brand actors and enough special effects to give you some bang for your summertime buck."

"[T]he movie doesn't make the mistake of trying to re-create the show," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "[T]he picture, at its best, has an affable, easygoing glow, and features a number of silly, delightful sight gags... At its worst, though, Get Smart doesn't trust its audience to groove on comedy alone: It has to be an action movie, too, and the recurring explosions and chases feel forced and manic. The picture could have been streamlined into a swift, 90-minute comedy. Instead, it suffers from needless bloat. Get Smart tries to give its audience everything, and ends up delivering less."

"Seriously, comedy writers, what's wrong with an old-fashioned pratfall?" asks Annie Wagner in the Stranger. "Must every mishap cause severe trauma to Carell's gonads and soft tissue?" And as for those Bush jokes, "A lame duck in politics is a sitting duck for satire: If you held your fire until now, you don't deserve the laughs." Sing it.

"'Forget it, Jake, it's summertime,' a cynical voice whispers in my ear, and I know he's right," writes Richard Schickel in Time. "But Charlie Chaplin used to say that all he needed to make a comedy was a park, a policeman, a pretty girl and his divinely innocent self. Of course, he was touched by genius and the people who make movies like Get Smart are touched by no more than the unwise desire to spend someone else's money on special effects that are inherently antithetical to the antic."

James Rocchi poses a series of questions at Cinematical: "Does Carell and Hathaway's unexpectedly deft capacity for combining comedy and action make up for the fact that director Peter Segal (The Longest Yard, Nutty Professor II: The Klumps) seems to find fat people, or people in fat suits, the height of comedy? Does the smart plot idea for how to get desk-jockey Max out into the thick of things make up for the lazy reveal of the film's final twist, which not only comes out of nowhere but, worse, strikes with no force whatever? Does the presence and obvious strong efforts of motion picture veterans in behind-the-scenes positions like fight director James Lew (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Rush Hour 3), director of photography Dean Semler (The Road Warrior, Dances With Wolves) and editor Richard Pearson (United 93, The Bourne Supremacy) compensate for the times the script by sitcom veterans Tom J Astle and Matt Ember slumps into lazy jokes or meandering tedium?"

"A lot of things explode, but the movie never detonates," writes the Boston Globe's Ty Burr.

"As a reworking of one of the great 1960s TV comedies, you'd think being funny would be its main goal," writes Kenneth Turan. "But you would be wrong. Very, very wrong." Also in the Los Angeles Times, Denise Martin lists "10 things you may not know about Get Smart's Masi Oka."

"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," writes Roger Ebert. "And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting."

Carell "is indeed perfectly cast," notes Bruce Bennett in the New York Sun. "Unfortunately, Mr Carell's performance is frankly just about all that Get Smart has to recommend it."

"In updating a beloved TV show, the filmmakers have gone out of their way to excise everything that was fun about it," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

"The comedy is only so-so, and the espionage action isn't much of a thrill either," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC.

Posted by dwhudson at June 18, 2008 2:10 AM