Get Smart wasn't exactly the biggest hyped movie in the world, but a 7.5 rating on IMDB and lots of media praise that I have been reading, I bit the bullet and saw this movie. It just about fails on all levels, and it's easily one of the worst movies I have seen this year. With Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway heading the movie, how could this have turned into such a train wreck? Ironically, at the end of the movie our agents escape a train wreck, and it pretty much sums up the entire film; it barely escapes total failure.
The main plot of Get Smart (if there is even one) is that the Russians have weapons of mass destruction and they want to blow stuff up, at least that's all I got from the films poor story telling. Yes, evil Russian terrorists that want to blow up the world, very original plot. Basically the government chooses Maxwell Smart, Agent 99 (Steve Carell) to go along on the mission with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) to stop evil.......or something. Our two "heroes" set out on random and unspecified missions, so you won't know what in the world is going on in terms of story progression. But story in a Action/Comedy/Romance? Well since it attempts to accomplish those, you would think they could nail one of them.
The only decent thing about Get Smart is that you will get a cheap laugh or two, here and there. The movie also establishes a growing romance between Carell and Hathaway, while although is extremely predictable, they do provide good stage presence together. However, my biggest problem with Get Smart, is if you look past the cheap laughs and ridiculous action scenes, there is no story established. After watching it, I feel like I missed something, there was absolutely no character development.
Towards the end the government suspects Carell is a double agent and that he is trying to pull a move over on them, however it's obvious that the double agent is among them, and you find out soon who that is. I will not specify who that is, since some people may want to see this flick, but it is extremely obvious during the course of the movie.
The thing that really got to me while watching Get Smart was that the humor was totally predictable, so when something happened, you didn't laugh, because you saw it coming from a mile away. They also try to rip off of movies like Indiana Jones with amazing escapes from death and avoiding nuclear bombs. The movie has such a hard time finding it's identity, that you will scratch your head trying to figure out what genre this movie actually fits in. Here, I have a category for movies like these; it's called abomination.
With Hathaway and Carell heading this one, I didn't think it was possible to have such a poor film, so hats off to the writers and producers on this one, you did it. However, I was completely confused that they casted girly- girl Anne Hathaway to be an ass-kicking secret agent? Also, former NFL bad boy Bill Romanoski makes a cameo in this one, as well as The Great Kali, for you wrestling fans out there. Unless you enjoy genre jumping films that involve cheap laughs and poor dialogue and atrocious story telling, you might want to skip this one.
Get Smart? Im smart enough to know that this one isn't a good one. A 2 out of 5.
