STUDIO: Warner Brothers
RELEASE DATE: June 20, 2008
STARRING: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, David Koechner, Terry Crews, Terence Stamp, and James Caan
WRITTEN BY: Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember
DIRECTED BY: Peter Segal
GENRE: Comedy
RATING: PG-13

For the first time in many years, a movie made me think of the failed John Candy spy/comedy Who's Harry Crumb? That's not a good thing. There's a reason the Police Academy franchise ended. Action/comedy is one of the hardest genres to pull off. Not only are the Bond movies practically self-parodies in themselves (especially the '80s ones) but maintaining the balance between fun action scenes and snappy banter requires pitch-perfect timing. There's nothing pitch-perfect about Get Smart, a film that doesn't work as a comedy or an action movie. The team in front of and behind the camera on the latest entry in "the year when movie comedy died" falls apart not because of too many bad decisions, but too few decisions at all. Rather than update the show with vibrant, modern-day energy, the writers of Get Smart have made a film that could have come out halfway between the era of the original show and the current one - back when movies like this were popular.

On paper, Steve Carell seemed perfectly cast as Maxwell Smart, a bumbling assistant to the Chief (Alan Arkin) of CONTROL, a covert government agency that was supposedly disbanded years ago but still works to protect the world from its rival, CHAOS. Smart dreams of being allowed into the field with his hero, Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson), but gets stuck behind a desk until the headquarters are attacked and the Chief has no choice but to promote the wannabe to a real spy. The Chief partners Smart with one of the most respectable spies since Bond, Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), who recently underwent plastic surgery after a job went poorly and her cover was blown. The newbie and the veteran head out to stop the nefarious Siegfried (Terence Stamp) from detonating a bomb and holding the world hostage. Anchorman's David Koechner and Terry Crews co-star as spies and Masi Oka and Nate Torrence appear as bumbling scientists who try to assist Smart. Bill Murray, Kevin Nealon, and a face from the original show pop up in a weird series of cameos that's more distracting than hilarious.

Carell has a deadpan wit on The Office that's perfect and I loved the guy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but after Evan Almighty, Dan in Real Life, and now Get Smart we need to start questioning if he can carry a movie. He's a nice enough fella but he makes some decisions with Maxwell Smart that are just plain wrong. Maybe he didn't want to draw too many comparisons to Adams' legendary character, but he plays it way too straight and comes off nearly see-through in his lack of screen charisma. It's actually his worst performance. He's nearly saved by Hathaway, who displays a sense of timing, especially in the action scenes, that I wasn't sure she had. But both of them should bow to the great Alan Arkin, who easily the steals the movie. He's the only actor who seemed to be aware that if he was having fun, we would too.

More importantly than any decisions made in front of the camera are the ones that were made behind it. It all boils down to this - Get Smart isn't funny. And the action scenes aren't thrilling enough to make up for the lack of laughter. Arkin, some of Hathaway's work, and two funny cameos might make it worth a rental, but that's it. It's not horrifically awful like the worst comedies of 2008 (there's a significantly worse one being released the same day), but is that all we ask for nowadays? Better than Meet the Spartans? We need to hold writers to a higher comedy standard than that. Don Adams deserves better. Heck, so does Bernie Kopell.