Get Smart movie is a treat for CONTROL freaks

October 29, 10:29 AMTV on DVD ExaminerJohn Stahl

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Stars of "Get Smart" movie

I wanted to write about the new "Get Smart" movie, which is being released on DVD next Tuesday, as a "New Releases Tuesday" entry yesterday but missed it by that much. Sorry about that, Chief.

This was a good movie that did a nice job of including most of the major elements of the television series on which it was based. However, no would would believe that it is a contender for best picture or the top 10 list of any reviewer. No one would even believe that the movie will ever make it on Turner Classic Movies. It is believable that it tells a generally credible story with clever twists and developments that keep the interest of the audience.

Fans of the original "Get Smart" series will also enjoy a cameo from one of the stars of that series. I assure my fellow CONTROL freaks that you will know this individual from Adam. No, we are not KAOS and we do pun here.

I concluded a long time ago that the obvious elements of good casting and strong writing are what make a classic television program stand out. Don Adams and Barbara Feldon were perfect casting for the original "Get Smart" series,and Steve Carell met the expectations of being an excellent Maxwell Smart. I did not mind that he played it largely as Michael Scott, Carell's character from the television program "The Office," doing a Maxwell Smart imitation. I would not be surprised if the fact that both characters have the same initials and that their names have the same number of letters in them is a coincidence. Both Scott and Smart have a very charming obliviousness and plunge enthusiastically into situations that the audience knows that they cannot handle but will emerge from without any long-term effects.

Genuine concern about the age difference between Carell and Anne Hathaway, who played Smart's partner Agent 99 in the film, was unfounded. The script addresses this issue well and Hathaway does a noteworthy job playing off of Carell's humor. She also fairly quickly sees the effectiveness of Smart's methods, the unexplained ways that his bumbling often leads to the desired result, and his incredible dedication to saving the day and the damsel in distress. I would have enjoyed her lament "Oh, Max" once or twice ala Feldon.

My only real disappointment with the film is that a little more of the cleverness and satire that made the original series so memorable would have made a good film a much better one without changing the underlying story. A missed opportunity for a segment or two regarding a highly incompetent and outrageously expensive government contractor do some work is one example. Another example is having the character of the president who is clearly modeled on the current President Bush choke on a pretzel and separately do an amusingly frantic dance in a setting that would be much funnier than the circumstances in which those incidents occurred in real life.

I also would have liked the villain who was quite serious to be more comedic in the spirit of the original series.

Including a "that's the second biggest X that I have ever seen" joke that was in many of the original episodes would have been another nice touch. An example would be a lab technician showing Smart an enormous i-phone style device that includes every feature under the sun and Smart saying that it was the second biggest cell phone that he had ever seen.

Moving onto technical aspects, I liked having the option of accessing deleted and alternate scenes while watching the movie but the movie being interrupted approximately every five minutes became annoying after a short while. You can watch the movie without that option. I did regularly find the alternate scenes to be more amusing than the scene that was chosen for inclusion in the movie.

Warner Brothers did its typically good job with the special features. A feature about the casting of the show and the special effects was very interesting and helped show why the producers cast Hathaway. The gag reel was also interesting and the right length at approximately 15 minutes. Viewers will also want enjoy the incredible scenery in the feature about filming on location.

Please feel free to add any comments or questions as entries to this post or e-mail them to tvdvdguy@gmail.com.