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Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell star in the spy spoof Get Smart |
Left smarting as I spy yet another spoof flick
GET SMART
Directed by Peter Segal
Certificate 12a
ON the one side we have the deadly serious spy flicks, the crash-bang-wallop movies that love a big explosion every couple of minutes to ensure the audience’s attention hasn’t drifted.
On the other, we have the whole sub-genre of spoof spy flicks, ranging from Peter Sellers’ Casino Royale through to Austin Powers. Some work (somehow, Mike Myers’ smutty agent is endearing) while others, such as the disastrous Johnny English with Rowan Atkinson, are about as funny as running your car over your favourite pet. With Smart, you can’t help but feel we’ve been here before. It makes me yearn for the finest of them all, Val Kilmer’s 1984 classic, Top Secret.
But while moments of sheer charmlessness litter this secret-agent comedy, there are enough stunt-related gags to make it extremely watchable in places.
Maxwell Smart (Steve Carrell) is the dweeby data cruncher at a top-secret American spy department. But when his colleagues’ identities are uncovered, he is the only one left in the office. The world is facing some serious problems from a gang of uber-baddies called KAOS, fronted by the usual European Godfather, this time called Siegfried and played by a menacing Terence Stamp.
But Smart has never done anything but a desk job, and is not the type who’ll be first over the top when the whistle blows.
Thankfully, he is not alone.
Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway on cheeky form) is the only other member of the team who hasn’t been compromised, and the pair form an unlikely partnership.
Smart has to rely on his wits (of which is he lacking) and a host of very cool gadgets (which he can hardly use) to keep the free world free.
This isn’t the funniest film released this summer, and might not even be the biggest laughathon of the week. But Carrell and Hathaway look as if they enjoyed it and you can’t help but get roped into the goofiness of it all. |
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