Get Smart

Much to my surprise, this one wasn’t half bad. Steve Carell makes for a fine Maxwell Smart, and Anne Hathaway is equally fine as Agent 99, who is sent out on a mission to take down the evil KAOS, now led by Terence Stamp as Siegfried. (Bernie Kopell, the original Siegfried, makes a quick cameo.) The film is nothing more than a thin plot to hang some jokes on, and some of those jokes are actually quite funny. There are some nice tributes to the original TV show and some interesting technological updates. I went in thinking I was going to see something terrible, and I got a semi-decent summer popcorn movie instead. It made me want to go out and get the shows on DVD. It also made me want to get a shoe phone.