In ‘Get Smart’ Lifeless Retread, Steve Carell Can’t Fill Don Adams’ Shoe

HollywoodChicago.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:23:43 -0700

Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Observing the new “Get Smart” film, which is based on the 1960s TV sitcom of the same name, is to note how much has changed since the Cold War ended.

KAOS and CONTROL – the U.S. and Russian spy agencies that square off in the movie – seem like relics of another era. In this age of homeland security and unlimited government wiretapping, it’s difficult to create fictional comedy that can compete with real-life absurdity.

Anne Hathaway (left) stars as Agent 99 and Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Tracy Bennett

The film version of “Get Smart” lives up to that truth. Combining dull action-movie elements, badly cast movie stars and an uncomfortable romance, the film has forgotten all about its TV roots and most of the humor.

Played by Steve Carell, Maxwell Smart is a Russian interpreter and communications administrator in the secret government spy agency CONTROL.

The chief (Alan Arkin) wants Smart to stay in the administration even though he longs to join spies like Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson) and work in the field.

After KAOS – a rival Russian agency – infiltrates and wrecks the CONTROL offices, Smart is promoted to field agent and partnered with super-spy Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway). Their mission is to find out who’s behind KAOS and identify their evil plans.

Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart (left) and Anne Hathaway stars as Agent 99 in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Warner Bros.

This takes them to the heart of Moscow. Thinking a Russian bakery is a KAOS front for nuclear weapons, Smart and 99 plant explosives and barely escape.

Steve Carell stars as Maxwell Smart in “Get Smart”.
Photo credit: Tracy Bennett

When the wrecked building turns up nothing, the wily Russians then travel to Los Angeles. Following them there, Smart and 99 must confront their rivals one last time and save the world.

Steve Carell is clearly not up to the challenge of filling Don Adams’ phone shoe as Maxwell Smart. The comedy he delivers is mostly cruel and has none of the snap or silliness of Adams’ razor-sharp interpretation.

Hathaway – who was cooler and more subtly amusing in “The Devil Wears Prada” – is completely out of her element when handling weaponry and practicing martial arts. She and Carell have less chemistry than a baking-soda volcano and their age difference is awkwardly apparent when they attempt romance.

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It seemed the filmmakers never saw one episode of the TV series when formulating the plot.

The film version tries to shoehorn reminders of several action movies – the James Bond series, “Mission Impossible,” “True Lies,” “Silver Streak” and even “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (among others) – but oddly distances itself from its primary and funnier television source.

This film is just another based-on-a-TV-show miscue that wastes a decent comic opportunity on let’s-blow-things-up trivialities. The legacy of “Get Smart,” audiences everywhere and ultimately the great Don Adams all deserve better.

“Get Smart,” which stars Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, Bill Murray and Ryan Seacrest, opened everywhere on June 20, 2008.

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com

‘Snow Angels’ an Essential Examination of Yin, Yang in Our Vulnerable Lives

HollywoodChicago.com — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:50:50 -0700

CHICAGO – Staying sane is truly an edge-of-the-knife proposition. We are all the sum of our past environments, our present circumstances and our future worries. The sludge that is generated by such a mixture becomes the psyche that’s ready to interact with other psyches we deem important or are forced to be around through family or commerce.

Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale in “Snow Angels”.
Photo credit: IMDb

Director David Gordon Green inspects the tipping point of this interaction in the unsparing new film “Snow Angels”.

Arthur (Michael Angarano) is the teenager who walks through all the lives of this multi-storied road. His old babysitter, Annie (Kate Beckinsale), is amid a separation from her husband, Glenn (Sam Rockwell), who has attempted suicide because of the relationship’s fallout.

Annie is also having an affair with her co-worker’s husband (Nicky Katt).

Meanwhile, Arthur’s dad (Griffin Dunne) decides he needs some space. The conflict of the potential break up with Arthur’s mother challenges the dynamics within the family. When Arthur meets Lila (Olivia Thirlby), though, the togetherness they develop helps to get him through difficult times.

When Annie and Glenn’s daughter suddenly disappears, the whole community – including Arthur and his parents – are about to experience a reaction to the subsequent turn of events in divergent and tragic ways.

Michael Angarano in “Snow Angels”.
Photo credit: IMDb

At first, I thought Beckinsale’s casting in this film was a mistake. She was too ultra glamorous amid such lower middle-class surroundings. She understood the wounds of her character, though, in trying to accommodate her slipping down husband and exposed herself in ways a lesser actor wouldn’t have explored.

Her scenes in the climax of the film had a resignation that was vitally real.

Sam Rockwell – an underrated actor who never seems to get the recognition he deserves – is astounding as Glenn.

Relying on the various tics of the person on the edge of a nervous breakdown, he filters born-again Christianity, substance abuse and narcissism through his brutal characterization. Though I didn’t know where he was going, I wished he wouldn’t get there.

Kate Beckinsale in “Snow Angels”.
Photo credit: IMDb

There’s a desperation of people trapped within their situation because the community seems to be as dead as some of its souls.

Even in the upper middle-class enclave of Arthur and his family, there’s a projected phoniness of “doing the right thing” especially as his mother exposes her husband’s selfishness after he leaves.

In contrast with the lower-class problems that are brewing, it emphasizes the commonality in all humans when faced with mortality.

There are bright spots. Olivia Thirlby (Ellen Page’s best friend in 2007’s acclaimed “Juno”) channels an Anne Hathaway-like brightness in her eccentric, photograph-taking teen goddess. Arthur – for all his dread – is most likely to survive intact because he’s a seeker. It’s no wonder the rest of the characters seem to gravitate to him.

This is an essential examination of dreams deferred through a darkness that lies dormant in the yin and yang of our vulnerable lives. While it’s a difficult film to absorb, it’s always absorbing. We are all terminal cases.

“Snow Angels” opened in Chicago on March 21, 2008 and limited U.S. theaters on March 7, 2008.

Click here for our full “Snow Angels” image gallery!

By PATRICK McDONALD
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
pat@hollywoodchicago.com