Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 13: Get Smart

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or a series of staples to the forehead.

Inasmuch as cinema is the defining popular medium of the last century or more, the movies have never trafficked exclusively in originality. From its earliest days, the film industry has borrowed liberally from other media, from folk tales to theater to proper literature. In the 1950s, when the advent of television seemed to sound a death knell for the cinema business, the silver screen weathered the storm by virtue of sheer spectacle, presenting its stories with a size and clarity that television could never hope to achieve. It was only a matter of time before television narratives would be blown up and repurposed for the big screen. 

So, why does the Hollywood treatment work so well for novels and plays, but fail so spectacularly when adapting television series? In the past 15 years or so, when this trend has really taken off, I can’t immediately think of a single TV-to-film adaptation that has succeeded creatively. Sure, make a big screen version of Miami Vice with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, and it’s bound to be a huge hit, but it ends up kind of vacant, sucking all the fun out of the original.

Part of the problem, I think, is that amplifying small screen stories with new actors renders them almost recognizable from their originals, while still trying to shoehorn little elements of homage into the plot. The movies are intended to work for all audiences, not just those who are familiar with the source material. For the real fans, the callbacks are just a bonus, but the goal is to entertain even the younger moviegoers, who may have no knowledge of the TV show at all. It seems a bit unnecessary to brand a new movie with a familiar name if a huge chunk of the target audience doesn’t even know who the characters are.

More importantly, the transition to the big screen (and the big budget) takes the charm out of what the fans loved about the source. TV shows have episodic or serialized narratives; the movies need to be epic and bombastic to justify their funding and their running time. Filmmakers are dealing with characters and story arcs that were created to be revealed on screen in a vastly different way. By adapting a television series, Hollywood isn’t playing to its own strengths. It’s pretty telling that the most effective old school television adaptations tend to be parodies, like The Brady Bunch Movie or Starsky and Hutch, decent films good for some knowing laughs, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Which brings me to Get Smart, a well intentioned Steve Carell vehicle that’s fun (very) occasionally, but can’t overcome the problems outlined above. In fact, it adds some problems of its own — namely the fact that, while it’s intended to fall under the dubious pseudo-genre of “action comedy,” it fails terribly at the “comedy” end of that equation. Which is a shame, since Get Smart (the TV series) was one of the more riotous sitcoms of its era.

Carell takes over as secret agent Maxwell Smart, originated by the brilliant Don Adams, who had gotten a great deal of comedic mileage out of the role, even going so far as to parody it in the animated series Inspector Gadget. Anne Hathaway plays Agent 99, Carell’s partner and (totally untrue to the original story) love interest. The ever-likeable Alan Arkin does a fine take on The Chief, and Dwayne Johnson plays Agent 23, a role created exclusively for the movie. The group is charged with stopping an international terrorist organization from blowing up Los Angeles, with Carell, whose character is a newly minted field agent (not an experienced, albeit bumbling one, as in the series), leading the charge.

Without the familiar name, Get Smart would be a passable action film, as the actors work well with what little story they are given, and the stunt work is nice enough. But there are maybe five half decent jokes in the whole movie, and maybe four of them were in the trailer. This is an impotent comedy, which half the time seems to be mining for laughs that never come, and half the time not even trying at all. For those who have seen the original series, the Get Smart name works to the film’s detriment. The only thing true to the original were some character names and a few catch phrases. So why the branding? I found myself wondering how much more I would have enjoyed the movie if it had just had a different title.

I think I would have liked it much better, though it still would have missed the mark with me. If only by that much.

Film: Get Smart
Director: Peter Segal
Stars: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, James Caan

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, small crowd; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 52%
My Grade (Out of 10): 3

Next Up: The Incredible Hulk