Get Smart no laugh riot, good for 10-yr-olds

SMART ENOUGH? Get Smart is a film adaptation of a popular 60s TV series.

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Keywords: Hollywood, Steve Carell

Cast: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway

Director: Peter Segal

The brand new Steve Carell starrer Get Smart is a film adaptation of a popular 60s TV series, but one that I must confess I'm not familiar with.

Doesn't really matter though, as the film's easy enough to understand without the background story.

Carell plays Maxwell Smart, an efficient analyst at a spy agency, who yearns to abandon his desk job and take to the field. He gets his chance eventually. He's teamed up with the glamorous but agile Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) on his first real 'outdoor' assignment which involves foiling a crime syndicate's nuclear weapons operation.

Smart turns out to be a clueless, bumbling secret agent who gets mistaken for a terrorist on an airplane, and then falls out of the airplane without a parachute, much to his partner's frustration.

The film's full of such childish gags, and to call this character a James Bond-spoof is a little insulting to Ian Fleming's evergreen creation.

Carell is charming, he always is, he's got great presence and he can do poker-faced humour like few can.

But if you really want to see Carell at his comic best, just rent episodes of The Office on DVD, you don't have to endure this silly film for that.

To anyone older than 10 who finds this funny, I have just one thing to say: "Get smart, dude!" That's two out of five. Just about.

Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)