What ever happened to the American comedy? For a country that has turned out brilliantly funny movies, from the likes of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, we're sure turning out duds, and at an amazing rate. Silliness has given way to stupidity and satire has given way to sarcasm.
The latest unfunny flop is "Get Smart," a new movie based on the spy spoof television show that ran from 1965-1970. "Get Smart" was a product of the Cold War and was hatched in the wonderfully demented minds of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, who penned "The Graduate." In the words of Brooks, "it's an insane combination of 'James Bond' and Mel Brooks comedy."
The show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, a bumbling secret agent from CONTROl, an American intelligence agency. He was joined on his missions by Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) a sexy and competent spy who routinely saved Smart from his own mistakes.
Just as James Bond had difficulty adjusting to a post-Cold War world, so does "Get Smart," released 38 years after the original series ended, find itself in a world without a default villain. Writers Tom Astle and Matt Ember resurrected KAOS, the Soviet counterpart to CONTROL, which is run by Siegfried (Terrence Stamp). Without the context of the Cold War, however, KAOS is just a rogue terrorist group, and serves mainly as a plot device.
On the other side of the fence is CONTROl, run by the Chief (Adam Arkin) and filled with agents (Dwayne Johnson, David Koechner), R&D geeks (Masi Oka, Nate Torrence) and analyst Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell). When CONTROL is breached by an unknown party and the identities of its field agents are compromised, Smart is promoted to a full-time agent and partnered with 99 (Anne Hathaway). Soon they're off to Russia to investigate the breach and discover what sinister things KAOS has been planning.
What keeps "Get Smart" from achieving full-fledged comedy status, besides the fact that many of its jokes fall flat, is its weird ratio of action to laughs. Much too often jokes are replaced with stunts and action set-pieces. A chase scene late in the movie involves a helicopter, an out-of-control SUV and a rampaging locomotive. The entire movie feels more like a third-rate Bond film than a Brooks/Henry creation.
The saving grace of "Get Smart" are its actors, all of whom are perfectly cast, with the exception of the leaden Hathaway. Stamp, Arkin and Johnson are particularly funny and refuse to take themselves too seriously. The biggest treat is Carell, whose comic acting is irreproachable. Carell, who looks like Don Adams, departs from his predecessor's deadpan style and makes Maxwell Smart a compassionate and sensitive agent.
Unfortunately for Carell, the lousy script and heavy-handed direction, by Peter Segal, don't due him justice. His version of Maxwell Smart is worthy of sequels; this incarnation of "Get Smart," uninspired and often juvenile, is not.
** out of ****
2 comments:
Can you really use Mel Brooks as an example of the great history of american comedy while you blast a movie he is involved with?
Between 1968 and 1974, Brooks directed three of the greatest American comedies. In 2008 he was a creative consultant on a bad movie.
So, yes, I can really cite Brooks as a comic genius and still criticize one of his movies.
FDR was a great president but he tried to stack the Supreme Court.
Orson Welles directed the greatest movie on the face of the earth and his last film role was the voice of Unicron in "The Transformers: The Movie," a two-hour long toy commercial set to an 80s rock soundtrack.
If there's something hypocritical in my review, I'm missing it.
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