Get Smart (2008)

Brief: Analyst Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) longs to move up to the exciting world of being an agent like his friend Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson), but The Chief (Alan Arkin) wants to keep his top analyst. After CONTROL is attacked by KAOS and all the agents identities exposed, Max is promoted to Agent 86, partnered with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), and sent after Siegfried (Terence Stamp).

Has Hathaway lost too much weight? No, seriously. There's a hollowness to her face that, despite how great she looked in a series of fantastic Chanel (I think) coats, kind of weirded me out. Also weirding me out was the fact that she didn't seem to be having fun in this movie. I get that 99 is the straight man to Smart's bumbling idiot, but it's alright if the straight man looks kindly on the bumbler every once and a while. There's no need to be so uptight. Alternatively, make how uptight you are funny.

You know who did look like he was having fun, though? Johnson. I think I might love him a little bit. He's so cutely supportive of Max, and there's very little more satisfying for an office drone than to see him, having been forced into the office from the field, stapling a paper that was jammed and not removed to the offender's head. I only wish I could pull a maneuver like that at the office.

Carell is ideal for this kind of role not because he's made a career out of playing characters with an acute lack of self-awareness but because he's adept at drawing out the internal sweetness of a character. Sure, he's got the bumbling Clouseau thing down pat, but it's actually the smaller moments, like when he tries to bond with 99 over her recent plastic surgery by revealing that he just lost a significant amount of weight, that make his roles feel full fleshed and sympathetic. His way with a one liner helps, too.

As for the rest of it, directed by Peter Segal and written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, it's not quite there. It's funny, sure, and well paced for what should be a thriller spoof, but it lacks a sardonic bite that would make it over-the-top hilarious. The best sequence comes early in the film when, in an attempt to make 99 jealous after she refuses to quit dancing with another man, Max takes the hand of a large woman, leads her out on the dance floor, and, surprise, finds her a nimble dancer. The surprise, of course, is on us. Max never doubts for a second that he's chosen the correct dance partner. It's his steadfast commitment to an idea that seems implausible to us but ends up working out for him that seals it. If the movie had more of that and less of a good number of other things (continuity errors among them), it would have been better. Still, it was pretty good. Oh, and Arkin has the best comic timing of anyone, ever. B+