Obtain Intellect....

Last Sunday the wife and I went out to see Get Smart, and I thought I'd post a thought or two.

Overall, it was a pretty good movie. I had a lot of laughs while watching it. For some reason, however, I was left feeling kind of disappointed. I don't know if it is because I expected more, or of it's simply because I'd seen The Dark Knight a couple nights earlier, and that experience raised the bar by which I judge all movies. I think maybe it's the latter.

Steve Carell was, of course, well suited to the role of the slightly bumbling, socially awkward, yet occasionally competent Maxwell Smart. Many of his roles are just slight variations of the same character - fortunately I haven't gotten tired of that character just yet. Even in Dan In Real Life, where he did play a more serious and emotional role, the Michael Scott/Andy Sitzer/Maxwell Smart-type character peeks through (and those are the funniest moments in that film as well.)

The rest of the cast performed adequately. No one really stood out in my mind as doing an extremely memorable job (except for maybe that huge henchman, who, in spite of being played by a professional wrestler, managed to display some believable emotion.)

There were a few spots that went too far in the search for the funny - one scene shows Smart riding in the back of a fighter jet, filling a barf bag up with, well, barf, and pointing it directly into the camera. In another scene (and haven't we seen this in about 100 other movies?) he is trying to move the unconscious body of a very fat man, and when someone sees this from an outside angle, it appears that they are engaging in vigorous (yet fully clothed,) sex! I don't know if this was funny the first time it was used as a sight gag, let alone the 100th. But, the rest of the audience laughed, so I may be alone in this opinion.

Like I said, I really enjoyed the movie. I'm not sure why I'm being so critical of it...maybe because I feel it could have been incredible instead of merely good. As a whole, Get Smart, in spite of what it did accomplish, seems to me like it had quite a bit of wasted potential.

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In other news, here's a song. It's one I heard when it was used in the trailer for the movie Underworld.

Red Tape