Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Maxwell Smart (played by Steve Carrell) is an analyst for a top-secret American intelligence agency known as CONTROL. While Max is very competent at what he does, his dream is to become a field agent like the suave, dashing 23 (Dwayne Johnson). Unfortunately, Max has already taken the field agent exam seven times to no avail. He’s now hoping that the eighth time is the charm. Indeed, Max learns that he does in fact pass the exam, but the Chief (Alan Arkin) refuses to promote him because he can’t afford to lose Max’s analytical contributions.

But Max gets his big break when CONTROL headquarters is attacked by a nefarious criminal organization known as KAOS. As a result of the infiltration, all of CONTROL’s agents’ identities are compromised, leaving the Chief no choice but to promote Max–who thenceforth becomes known as Agent 86. He’s partnered with Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway), who has recently had plastic surgery and is therefore still unknown to KAOS.

86 and 99 are dispatched to Russia to track down some clues that might lead to Siegfried, the KAOS mastermind. They go after a bombmaker named Krstic (David S. Lee), and eventually find a KAOS weapons facility. Max reports the findings, which brings 23 and some other agents to the area for a follow-up investigation. While there, however, 23 doesn’t find any evidence of nuclear material and learns that KAOS was able to remove their weapons from the country. This suggests that they had some help from within CONTROL, and Max is suspected of being a double-agent.

Max is taken to prison, but manages to escape from his holding cell. After receiving a coded message on the radio, he hastens to Los Angeles, where Siegfried is planning an attack on the President. Max figures out that the attack will take place during a concert and the bomb will be triggered by the final notes of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. He ends up saving the day, and exposing the real traitor within CONTROL. Oh, and he gets the girl (99) as well.

My Reaction: I never saw the television show Get Smart, so any and all in-jokes regarding the original series were lost upon me. The only things I recognized were Max’s shoe phone, and the name Maxwell Smart itself. I guess you could say I was going into this with a fresh perspective.

The main plot was a bit convoluted, so I didn’t bother trying to follow what was going on. I had a feeling it wouldn’t make much sense anyway, and knew that it was basically just a vehicle for the comedic scenes. I was expecting a lot of big laughs from this one, but ended up disappointed in that respect. There were definitely a few laugh-out-loud moments–just not as many as I had hoped for.

I know that nothing about this movie was supposed to be grounded in reality, but that couldn’t prevent me from being annoyed at the whole parachute/sky-diving scene. So Agent 99 was able to “catch up” to Max even though he started free-falling almost a minute before her and she was on a moving plane the entire time he was plummeting towards the ground? Yeah, right. And while I admit to not being the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to physics, don’t all bodies fall to earth at the same rate? So would it even be possible for her to catch up at all? I know 99 was making diving/swimming motions, but come on… would that really have any effect?

Overall, I thought Get Smart was an ok film. On the positive side, it was funny in places and Anne Hathaway was surprisingly good in her role. On the negative side, it was too long, the plot was boring, and I’d seen the whole thing about a bomb being planted in a concert hall only to be set off by a string of notes in Eagle Eye, so meh to that as well. I give this film 2 stars out of 5.