Get Smart (2008)

Would you believe "best movie of the year"? No. Would you believe "funniest movie of the year"? No. Would you believe "so-so espionage farce with a few good chuckles"?

That's approximately my assessment of Get Smart, a movie that unfortunately let all of the good parts out of the bag with its marketing campaign. A sequel/update of the classic television series of the same name, Get Smart is a spy farce in the tradition of Austin Powers with Steve Carrell as the imperfect Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 in CONTROL.

When Smart is promoted by The Chief (Alan Arkin, perhaps the funniest actor in the movie), he teams up with sexy superspy Agent 99 (an incredibly gorgeous Anne Hathaway) and the suave Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson, who is still "The Rock" even if he drops the nickname from his credits) to fight the forces of KAOS and its pseudo-leader Siegfried (Terence Stamp, who's again as out of place here as he was in Elektra). Obligatory references to the original TV show, half-hearted laughs, and spectacular explosions ensue.

Something tells me this movie would have been funnier if I hadn't seen the trailers, although call that the "Cinema King Paradox" - too-good trailers ruin a movie, but I wouldn't see a movie if I didn't like the trailers. Go figure. The problem here is that all the funny moments, punchlines, and slapstick choreography have been spoiled by the trailers, which contain the best parts of the film. One notable exception - Alan Arkin delivers a line near the end of the film that made me about fall out of my chair. Oh, yeah, that and crunchy pudding. And a hysterical cameo by Patrick Warburton (Puddy) as... well, I won't ruin it. Best casting since Heath Ledger as The Joker, though.

(Speaking of The Joker, I was inordinately thrilled by the presentation of the "Happy Trails" trailer for The Dark Knight which appeared before my screening of Get Smart. Available at http://whysoserious.com/happytrails for those poor folks who haven't seen it yet.)

Perhaps part of the problem is that Get Smart tries to be a serious espionage story with injections of comedy. What's then disorienting about that is that the film falls into all the spy tropes - feuding partners who fall in love, a surprise double agent (whose identity I predicted even before the story introduced the threat of a double agent), the villain's henchman who develops a conscience, &c - without adequately poking fun at these cliches --- something the Austin Powers scene did brilliantly. [I still crack up at the scene where Dr. Evil's son asks him of Austin Powers, "Why don't you just shoot him?!"]

There aren't as many laughs as the trailer would lead you to believe, and if you've seen the trailer, you've already seen the best parts of the movie. But there's something to be said for a movie that contains a ton of explosions, something a filmgoer such as myself can always appreciate. It's just that I was looking for something a little more substantial in a movie this weekend. Of course, it was between this and The Love Guru, so I think my choice was fairly obvious.

Oh, well. Missed it by that much.