Get Smart

In a summer with no new Bond picture, will I be considered a heretic by saying Get Smart will do just about as well?

There is stupid silly humor and then there is smart silly humor. Get Smart is brilliant stupid humor. And it's hilarious.

The unexpected star is Hathaway, looking cool as a runway model in the role originated by Barbara Feldon, lithe as a (pink) panther, and displaying great comic timing.

Thanks to the comic precision of Steve Carell, who is square-jawed-deadpan perfect as the title character, something genuinely sweet happens in this latest of a long parade of movies inspired by vintage TV shows.

Get Smart is action movie and spoof and, though it's often a little unbalanced, the ultimate result is a harmlessly entertaining picture.

Would you believe the summer movie comedy season just got a lot Smarter? Steve Carell proves he’s the king of laughs. He’s hilarious.

Carell is adept at both slapstick and deadpan humor, and he uses both here. He resembles the late Adams somewhat, but his Max is more man, less spoof, bumbling but not clueless.

Get Smart turns out to be a much more entertaining movie than its tedious trailers suggest. It's not going to redefine comedy as we know it, but it's amusing and briskly paced, busy with an engaging mix of supporting actors.

Carell draws laughs because he stays true to the character. He is self-deprecating as he throws himself into every gag.

The truth is that Get Smart is one of the year's sharper comedies, and if it contains any WMDs, that stands for "wit of major delight."

It doesn't produce the big laughs it probably should, but the acting is smart, the pacing is quick and the film is just plain sweet.

As much as I enjoyed Get Smart, I still found myself wishing the movie were as funny as its ads, or as good as its cast.

Does the world really need yet another big-screen version of a classic TV series? Probably not. But Get Smart, the latest effort at cashing in on nostalgia, is amusing and occasionally hilarious.

Get Smart is as giddily carefree about plot, and intent upon laughter, as the TV show. Not all the jokes click, but enough do.

There's a lot to like about Get Smart, and most of it has to do with Carell. He's managed the difficult task of playing Max Smart without doing an impersonation of Don Adams.

A perfectly safe and satisfying exercise in escapist entertainment, Get Smart turns out to be more of an action movie with comedy in it than a comedy with sporadic bursts of action.

Get Smart presents itself as an action-filled spy movie that just happens to be really funny.

The calculus for each scene is unwavering -- TV show reference, slam-bang action, wisecrack -- and it wears thin fast.

The plot feels provisional, like the movie is feeling its way toward a better sequel.

Fans of The Office who know and love the Carell M.O. may find similarities between Dunder Mifflin's knuckleheaded boss and the bumbling Maxwell Smart.

Is it praise or criticism to call a movie competent? That's the term that best describes Get Smart.

It's nice to see Steve Carell in a decent movie again, after ho-hum programmers like Dan in Real Life, or the awful Evan Almighty.

Would you believe the new version of the '60s spy spoof Get Smart, starring Steve Carell, isn't awful -- like almost all TV-to-movie transfers -- but instead, that it's actually pretty funny (if overlong and overproduced)?

Neither as funny nor as relevant as the classic TV series, but Carell -- and even Johnson -- provide enough laughs to earn a pass.

By veering away from the tone and style of the Mel Brooks/Buck Henry original series, Peter Segal's Get Smart deprives its audience and its usually hilarious star, Steve Carell, of any real fun.

Get Smart is still silly more than four decades after its television debut.

No knockout, but Carell wins on a rock-solid technicality -- he's funny.

Even with a game new cast, there's little of the flair for zaniness the embedded Get Smart fans will expect.

Although it's ideally cast and consistently semi-amusing, Get Smart takes its cue from the wishy-washy lead character.

It's a light, silly instantly forgettable comedy peppered with action set-pieces and affectionate nods to its fondly remembered predecessor, including a gracious end-credits dedication to the late Don Adams and Edward Platt.

While the film is breezily entertaining, it also is surprisingly generic, despite the likable Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart.

The movie is a time-killer without a killer instinct. You never get the sense that the director, Peter Segal, knows where the funny is, whether in his star or in the story.

A dumbed-down version of a belovedly lowbrow 1960s TV series, the film is a corporatized tissue of gay jokes, fat jokes, ugly jokes, bathroom humor, action-movie filler and what a riot it has been to have an idiot as president.

A little more unabashed silliness might have made Get Smart a better movie. As is it's a chuckly comfort-food film that you neither love nor hate, serviceable fare for a warm summer daze.

It would be nice to imagine a Get Smart movie with even a bit of the wit and absurdist humor its small-screen counterpart brought to life. It doesn't happen in this Get Smart movie, that's for sure.

By and large there's almost nothing to separate it from other multiplex make-work -- let alone to compete with the best comedies now on TV.

Misses the tongue-in-cheek tone of the original series by quite a bit. Fortunately, it has the services of Steve Carell, who specializes in likable shmoes.

Although the story is predictable and stale, a mishmash of just about every spy movie of the past 30 years, the supporting cast is good.

Credit where credit is due: Peter Segal smoothly transitions between slapstick, banter and stunt-work.

There are few truly memorable lines, and it's imminently forgettable, but it's the kind of summer movie audiences devour in this season between caped crusaders, zombie pirates and action flicks named for Black Sabbath songs.

Despite its classic-TV pedigree, Get Smart is just another big, dumb summer movie and should have heeded its title's advice.

The movie version of the TV spy spoof departs considerably from the original, becoming yet another sporadically amusing action comedy.

The movie gets the biggest laughs out of pure incompetence - Max repeatedly wounding himself with a mini-crossbow, or making an Indy-style swing to safety and smacking into a brick wall.

Too long by at least 15-20 minutes, Get Smart is nevertheless a giggly summer movie.

There are many stretches when it's easy to forget that Get Smart is a spoof; it's more like a third-rate James Bond with pratfalls.

It's films such as these that make you appreciate what the old folks refer to as "a light touch."

Get Smart needed to be a lot smarter. And funnier. The movie stands as proof yet again that hit television series do not make for good movies.

It typically misses its target -- the funny bone -- by such a wide margin that we might credit shrapnel rather than the aim of the director or screenwriters when the rare hit is achieved.

While this mostly comic espionage thriller features a couple of chuckle-worthy elements, it also subscribes to the supposed successful summer-movie formula: It's heavy on big, loud, dumb action.

TV adaptation takes its shoe phone and stomps all over the series' charm.

While it's not Evan Almighty horrible, Carell is becoming the poster boy for high concept nags that fail to win, place or show.

The plot? An afterthought, taking a back seat to sight gags, high-tech gizmos and standard action sequences.

Get Smart marks the possible tipping point of the so-square-he's-cool everyman appeal of Steve Carell, from comic genius to annoyingly overexposed.

Get Smart isn’t droll enough to satisfy fans of the original, and it doesn’t feature sufficient action to fully engage younger viewers, instead achieving a middle ground of each that never truly captures the imagination.

Barely resembles its predecessor in terms of spoofy spirit. It often, unbelievably, seems to want to be a plain-old summer action flick.

It’d be cute enough to say that Get Smart misses its mark by that much, but in truth, Peter Segal’s update of the boomer-beloved television show comes up lame about halfway through its bloated running time.

There isn't a single joke in Get Smart that hasn't either been done in some form or another a million times or isn't so obvious that you've written it in your head before it happens.

Would you believe Segal barely allows his fearlessly comic lead to cut loose? Although Carell is never less than likable, he's funnier in any random scene of The Office.

As much money and talent as they had to throw at this monstrosity, it rarely generates laughs.

Steve Carell tries to fill the shoe-phone shoes of Don Adams in Get Smart, a lame, not-so-funny update of the 1960s TV series.

Plays like a pale retread of a Mission: Impossible script. Which would be fine if Get Smart were actually funny. It’s not.

The perpetrators of Get Smart almost entirely miss what made the Cold War TV spy comedy funny.

The makers of this Get Smart have essentially cranked out a dull slam-bang spectacle where laughs are tertiary.

So deadly dull, so obnoxiously loud, and so completely useless that it deserves to end the careers of just about everyone involved.

Remaking Get Smart for the big screen might have sounded like a bad idea, but the movie shows it to have been something else: a really bad idea.