Get Smart: Element of Surprise

Offiicial Site: getsmartmovie.warnerbros.com
Director: Peter Segal
Writer: Tom J. Astle, and Matt Amber
Producer: Michael Ewing, Alex Gartner, Andrew Lazar, and Charles Roven.

Starring: Steve Carrel as Maxwell Smart, Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, Dwayne Johnson as Agent 23, Alan Arkin as The Chief, Terence Stamp as Siegfried, and Terry Crews as Agent 91 (IMDb). Rated PG-13.

Maxwell Smart eagerly seeks a promotion to be a field agent, but he is denied that promotion because he is too valuable as an intelligence analysts. However, when CONTROL headquarters is attacked, Maxwell Smart is promoted to being a field agent because his face is unknown to CONTROL'S nemesis KAOS. Agent 99 is appointed as his field partner despite her disapproval, and together they began tracking KAOS to prevent a nuclear attack.

Steve Carrel was sufficiently funny, but his brand of humor is an acquired taste, as his jokes can sometimes be to subtle to understand the punchline. This sort of subtle cerebral humor seems to be consistent with the humor found in the original television series that was not flat out hilarious but laden with witty under the radar punchlines. This was precisely what was present during the film, mainly small deposits of jokes, without any major funny scenes.

At some point the film seemed not to have a point as the plot simply disappeared, or was suspended, or engulfed by the aim of being funny. The sporadic jokes may have hurt the plot of the film, because the dialogue did not sufficiently serve as an explanatory agent to outline the goal of the characters in conjunction to the overall aim of the film. This is not to say that there was no explanation, indeed there was, but the subtle jokes distracted the plot of the film to an extent. Over all, the film was funny, and the chemistry between Hathaway and Carrel was awesome. Metacritic.com indicated the film received mixed reviews, and Rottentomatoes.com indicated the film received 62 fresh tomatoes to 52 rotten ones thus far. This movie was entertaining and I will grade it a C-. Stay tuned Movieporium.blogspot.com.