All that's missing is the spirit and the anarchic humor of the sitcom created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. The result is an overdressed, carefully stitched scarecrow of a comedy.
In the new Get Smart, Max is a brilliant if fussy government analyst, interpreting chatter - bits of enemy conversation picked up by satellites and other espionage hardware.
When the evil K.A.O.S., led by the unlikely tandem of Terence Stamp and Borat pal Ken Davitian, infiltrates Max's organization, dashing spies like Dwayne Johnson's cocky Agent 23 are assigned to desk duty and the pencil-pushing Max is pushed out into the field. For his first international assignment, he is teamed with the lanky and lethal Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway).
Their mission is a tedious exercise in cloak-and-stagger, with lots of physical gags, double entendres and humiliation humor (like Max ballroom-dancing with an enormous woman). It's a series of slapstick sketches slammed together without the cohesion of narrative.
As a diversionary tactic, the movie supersizes the supporting cast,ranging from Alan Arkin (assuming Edward Platt's old role as Chief) to Heroes' Masi Oka, David Koechner, Dalip Singh (better known as professional wrestler the Great Khali) as a Jaws-like adversary, and James Caan, who is dreadful as the dim-witted president with the Texas twang.
But Get Smart is just warming up. It mixes in cameos in manic and madcap fashion, a wild cavalcade including Bill Murray, Kevin Nealon, Patrick Warburton and Bernie Kopell, the Love Boat doctor who was the original K.A.O.S. boss on TV. There's even a vocal drop-in from Ryan Seacrest, who also gets name-checked in the script with suspicious frequency.
