Get Smart

This is turning into a year of walk-outs for me, with Peter Segal's remake of the successful 1960s TV series marking the 4th time I've bailed on a film before the end this year alone. The problem with Get Smart is that it just isn't funny at all. Not one bit. The script is so lacking in charm, wit or originality that you wonder how they went forward with it. Exit lines are painful, jokes are tired or cliched and, whilst some talented actors do their best with the material, there is not much they can do to salvage any shred of dignity from a screenplay so lacking in quality.

I kind of knew what to expect from the trailer, but one notable critic declared that you can "forget the trailer, because it doesn't do the film justice." Little did I know that the painfully unfunny trailer actually managed to cram in all of the film's highlights.

Steve Carell is great. He always is. I love him in The Office, even if the writers insist on making his character too broad at times. He is at his best when he's playing things more subtlely and when given that opportunity, there is no-one better on TV. His big screen career has been a little mixed however. Enjoyable turns in films like Little Miss Sunshine and The 40 Year Old Virgin, have been balanced by disastrous projects such as Evan Almighty - an ill-advised sequel to one of the worst films of 2003.

Get Smart will probably not hurt his stock too much however, it having taken over $100 million at the US box office. In fact, earning so much in such a poor film may even make his stock rise slightly, since audiences clearly like him. There's certainly not many other reasons to have turned up for this one, although seeing Anne Hathaway very capably branch out into a new genre is one of them.

Plotwise, Get Smart is a James Bond spoof - a bumbling secret agent and his significantly more savvy sidekick go undercover to thwart a crime syndicate intent on world domination. It's been done before, although never really that successfully. Johnny English and Spy Hard, both films with very engaging leads, failed miserably and of the 3 Austin Powers films, only the first one manages to elicit any chuckles. Even then, as one critic wryly observed, Mike Myers' recent stuff has been so bad you wonder whether you actually did find him funny in the first place.

So Get Smart can take its place alongside these other failures. It is surely a task not beyond the best screenwriters in the business; spoofing James Bond must be possible. Perhaps though the very fact that so many of those early Bond films were tongue in cheek makes it a difficult proposition. You're trying to outdo something that works so well as an action film, and one that has its fair share of humour anyway. And for that matter it's often funnier - compare the Austin Powers spoof name Alotta Vagina with the Goldfinger version Pussy Galore. Which is cleverer? There's no contest.

Get Smart is probably not so bad that it deserved me walking out after 50 minutes but I realised I couldn't be bothered to stick it out so I left. I've probably sat through worse if truth be told, and maybe Get Smart will successfully appeal to youngsters. However for any discerning adult, you have been warned.

D