Get Smart (2008)

In almost every instance I think remakes are a bad idea, but even I will concede that there comes a point when I can at least understand why they do them.

After all, Don Adams has hardly been available to continue playing Maxwell Smart since his sad passing in 2005.

If it were up to me, I'd call time on the character and leave the canon to spin-offs and prequels, if that, but in Hollywood, money is understandably a higher priority than creative integrity.

So, ignoring everything that has gone before, and certainly any original premises that might otherwise have got filmed instead, we wipe everything out and start all over again back at the beginning, exchanging 60 hours of comedy for just a few.

On the one hand, this footnote in the history of Get Smart is as inept as its title character. The original 30-year canon, as far as I am aware, was family entertainment. Here it gets positively bawdy in places.

99: "I'm just a woman with a dusty old uterus."

Admittedly The Nude Bomb may have seemed similarly extreme in its day.

However ignoring that as aspect of its tone, this reboot pays tribute to its predecessor so well that I have to wonder why they didn't just make this a continuation of the original history. Steve Carell doesn't so much bring a fresh interpretation to the role of Max, as do an excellent job of building upon Don Adams' version.

And all the old running jokes are here to be enjoyed again too - the shoe phone, the cone of silence, and "Would you believe…?", not to mention of course the whole walking down the corridor through all the closing doors thing.

In fact, overall I found this movie to be great fun. Those who remember the original though - ie. those to whom the title unavoidably aims this film - may well hate it.

So why not just start something completely new instead? It's arguably a little more respectful to the series than pointing at 99's uterus.

(available here.)
(with thanks to Flatmate Dave)