Review of GET SMART

This evening a lot of the cast and crew of Children of Eden got together at the Carousel Grande in Greensboro to catch Get Smart, the new movie starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne ("The Rock") Johnson and Alan Arkin based on the classic 1960s television comedy.

I must say, Get Smart the movie was a very pleasant surprise! From the very beginning, we were laughing like crazy. Carell plays Maxwell Smart (played by Don Adams in the television show), an analyst with the U.S. Government agency CONTROL. After an incident at CONTROL Headquarters, Smart is given his first field assignment alongside the beautiful and dangerous Agent 99 (Hathaway). The two are soon thrust into action in the heart of Moscow, where they must stop an agent of KAOS (played by Terrance Stamp) from unleashing nuclear terror on the unsuspecting world.

Plotwise it sounds like your standard Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy story. But Get Smart is also very faithful to the spirit of its television antecedent. Right from the getgo, all the classic Get Smart elements are introduced: the series of sliding doors, the phone booth, the Cone of Silence (look for the original as well as the updated version), the memorable theme music... and of course, the shoe phone (two of my fellow Children of Eden cast members said that I was laughing real hard when we got to see that). I thought that Carell was terrific as Maxwell Smart, and though he doesn't try to ape Don Adams' inimitable style, he certainly does channel Adams here while enhancing it with his own unique persona as an actor. Hathaway too is great as Agent 99. Alan Arkin as The Chief is a hoot, especially in one scene where he does something that he's wanted to do "since Nixon". Also look for cameos by Bill Murray and James Caan (as the President of the United States!).

So if you're in the mood for a good comedy, not to mention one of the better movies that I've seen lately to have been inspired by a television series, you should give Get Smart a try. Definitely one to catch while it's playing in theaters.

Categories: comedy, get smart, movies, reviews