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Elegy

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Wanted

Would you believe they've gone ahead and made a movie version of the spy spoof TV show Get Smart that pretty much ignores everything that originally made the '60s program so smart and fresh? Where the series, created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, was smart, sly, witty and crammed with catchphrases and satirical jabs at the government's mania for secrecy and spying -- and often getting things hopelessly wrong -- the movie, an action comedy, is something else again. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway step into the roles of Agent Maxwell Smart and Agent 99, respectively, made iconic by nerdy, idiotically self-impressed Don Adams and growly, sexy Barbara Feldon; the fit will only look seamless to those unfamiliar with the originals.

It's an origin story in which Carell's Smart, an audience-friendly, blanded-out version of Adams's Smart, struggles to be promoted from desk jockey to full-fledged secret agent at CONTROL, just like swaggering rock star Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock). Smart finally gets the nod from The Chief (national treasure Alan Arkin), who pairs him with stylish 99 and sends them off to foil KAOS bad guy Siegfried's (Terence Stamp) dastardly scheme to explode nuke weapons. The two, who compete and bicker rather than generate heat, don't gel and it's not just because of the difference in their ages. In nothing flat, the movie descends into stale humor involving misfires of Smart's 007-type gadgets, falling out of airplanes without a parachute and a traipsing around Moscow's Red Square, building up to a special effects action finale that fizzles. Hathaway looks terrific but acts as if humor isn't her native language. The talented Carell could have been a blast in the role but the movie, directed by Peter Segal (Anger Management, 50 First Dates) from a script by comedy team Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, exhibits no sense of style, tone or comic know-how. Word is that a sequel is already being cooked up. Smart? Guess again.

by Stephen Rebello

credit: Tracy Bennett ©2008 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.