Last week, I went and watched the new version of the movie “Get Smart”. I had fond memories of the show when I was a child and it was on Nick and Night, but since nostalgia has burned me before (think the latest Indian Jones movie, Star Wars, Catwoman, oh, damn, lots of them) I went in slightly wary. The movie itself was sort of a mixed bag, and I had to chew on it before I could intelligently make a point on it.
Spoilers below the fold:
Success:
The movie was freaking hilarious. Even when I saw the gags coming a mile away (Maxwell Smart pulls out a blow-gun- what are the odds that he WON’T suck in the dart?) I still laughed. And when I saw Maxwell, a generally calm as a cucumber character yelling that this is the happiest day of his life in front of his co-workers and boss, because he thinks he’s in a silent tube is hilarious. The jock-field agents and nerd-analysts rivalry was also hilarious to me, as a nerd-type person.
Failure:
Oh sweet god, the fat jokes! First, there is the back story that Maxwell Smart was a horrible fattie (complete with flashbacks of Steve Carrell in a fatsuit), with the insinuation that he just needed to buckle down, work multiple hours a day, and never eat carbs again. This is SOMEWHAT mitigated by a dance scene, in which Smart dances with a very heavyset women. She is very light on her feet, and the two out-dance the “hot” couple. Also, when Smart lifts her over his head at the end, she does not crush him from above (which is what I was afraid of when I first saw the set up). They avoided the a lot of the usual cliches, and it had a very “I know I’m hot stuff” coming from the girl at the end of it, which warmed my heart.
Failure:
It’s also a mixed bag when it comes to race jokes. On the one hand, it does go out of it’s way to repeat the message “the enemy is human, too”. One the other hand, they have a stereotype of a nerdy Asian engineer, and there is a whole gag about how profiling-is-bad-but-really-it-is-accurate.
Success:
The nostalgia warmed me. Seriously, it was very well done- it wasn’t stale, and it wasn’t so obvious that it was distracting. I went with PE, who had never even heard of the series before, and he could still enjoy it. I was also pleased as punch that they figured out a good, not-overly-contrived reason to have Maxwell Smart pull out his shoe phone in the age of cell phones. Just really great.
Failure: There is no corresponding failure to this one. Seriously, this movie should be the template on how to appeal to nostalgia without having it be the whole movie for Hollywood from now on.
Success: Anne Hathaway makes a kick-ass Agent 99. She really steps into the role; she is talented, driven, ambitious, and follows well in the footsteps of the original Agent 99. She ends up rescuing Maxwell Smart on more than one occasion as well, and she only starts to like him AFTER he demonstrates that he’s an intelligent person, not a stupid screw-up.
Failure: I’m sure this next one will comes as no surprise to any feminist. Agent 99 is talented, driven, ambitious- she’s obviously a humorless harpy who’s uterus is all dusty (ha ha) who has sex with all of her partners! Seriously, Mel Brooks, I think you’re funny as hell, but would it KILL you to write in a female character who isn’t a caricature of a person? This movie does not pass to MMM.
Success:
Multiple jokes about the president as a George W. Bush character, right down to him taking orders from the Vice President, and the intelligence community being a joke.
Failure:
The president in the movie was still smarter than George W., although I’m chalking that one up for a fail for the United States.
Final Fail: For the love of Christ, a Cessna cannot, in any circumstance, fly vertical in slow flight, and cannot go vertical without losing thousands of feet of altitude. There has never been such a demonstrated lack of flight knowledge since Iron Man*.
Final tally: so-so. I’m going to call it a B, and say it’s better than 90% of all comedies produced in the last 10 years.
*You CANNOT get ice on the exterior of anything if there is NO VISIBLE MOISTURE! Now, if they would have shown the suits to be carburated, then that would have been nifty, since you can get carb icing up to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but you cannot have exterior icing unless you are flying through a cloud. That part irritated me, and all of my pilot friends- if you’re going to make something a major plot point, the least you could do is look up the physics of it.
The fat hate bugged the crap out of me too. The “dusty uterus” jokes didn’t bother me as much, because the way they were presented (out of the mouth of the offended, inarticulate, and not so bright Smart), which struck me as mocking that kind of accusation, especially since in the circumstance he was aiming them at a woman who’s obviously not old, and recognized as attractive by everyone. The dance scene, which looked from the previews like it would piss me off, was actually my favorite scene.
I liked the movie decently well, but like WallE and Kung Fu Panda, otherwise quality movies can be destroyed by fat hate. I just wish someone would give the creators a good hard smack in the head with the Fat-Acceptance stick and just cut out that kind of crap. And the not-hating-women stick. And the racial-awareness stick. And the privilege-awareness kick in the balls.
I loved this movie!
I have never laughed so much at a movie in all my life.
You are right with all the failure points, but I still think this movie is totally worth seeing if anyone reading this is on the fence about whether to go or not.
*Spoiler*
My brother and I saw this movie together. All my friends were seeing “Wanted” but I needed a laugh and we had been planning to see it since it came out - we watched it every single night it was on Nick at Nite growing up. I was worried it would suck, but very glad it did not.
Yes, the fat jokes bothered me.
I think that 99 didn’t sleep with *all* of her partners, just The Rock. (And I guess, now, Smart.)
But in the end, any movie where Steve Carrell gets the girl instead of The Rock - especially without him having to rape her a la Revenge of the Nerds - will always be near and dear to my heart.
Great summer popcorn movie, especially if you want to nerd it up. I am such a geek - I was applauding the first time he said “missed it by that much” and my brother let out a huge guffaw at the “would you believe” sequence.
To be fair, I’d probably sleep with The Rock too, given the chance ;).
I like the phrase “privilege awareness kick in the balls”.
Wait, there’s a Get Smart movie? Man, am I behind the times. Looking forward.
And holy cow, Elizabeth, that is SO totally rape in Revenge of the Nerds. I don’t know why I never noticed that before. Probably because I first saw it when I was twelve and it has a lot of jiggly girl parts, thus permanently branding my brain with a positive imprint.
I still can’t decide if I want to see it or not, darn it. I watched it as a kid too!
Watch it! Join us!
Watch it. It is funny. Alan Arkin makes me happy in my pants.