The Old "Start Out With a Bad Script and You End up With a Bad Movie Trick!"

Updated: June 18, 2009

SEQUEL? There are plans to produce a theatrical sequel, as opposed to the direct-to-DVD disaster done in 2008 that didn't star Carell and Hathaway. Studio surveys showed that after leaving the theater moviegoers were not anxious to see more Get Smart so no immediate sequel plans were begun. After the movie sold well on DVD its first week, the sequel moved into "active development." Then, plans started to be delayed when Pete Segal was announced as the director of the latest movie in the Meet the Fockers franchise. However, barely two weeks after being trumpeted as the perfect director to continue the franchise, Segal was out of the project. No one is saying why and I'm assuming it will be put down to the old standby, "creative differences." Being dumped from that well-received comedy franchise, as well as the suspension of the Shazam! feature, frees up Segal to direct a Get Smart sequel. It's now on schedule to shoot in early 2010 and Steve Carell is doubling up on his shoots for The Office in order to shoot the contractually obligated sequel and other movies. The sequel will be written by the same hacks who wrote the first movie so don't expect any dramatic changes. The plan is to try and reflect current political reality and have a black president, as well as feature Hymie more prominently. The sequel will star Carell, Hathaway, and Arkin.

After my first review of this movie's script I was accused of being "biased" towards the original and unable to adjust to a Get Smart without Don Adams, which were ridiculous claims. I was always in favor of a high-quality Get Smart remake and wish I would have gotten one. Above all, the original series stood for quality comedy and most industry professionals and critics felt the same way, as evidenced by its four Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series. The most important thing a Get Smart movie had to do was to be funny. I, along with most fans, wanted that above all else. Let's see what kind of award nominations it received for quality:

Academy Award Nominations: 0 
Golden Globe Nominations: 0
Writers Guild Awards: 0
LA Film Critics Awards: 0
NY Film Critics' Awards: 0

     This site has put me in touch with many professional comedy writers and performers over the year, both in and out of the Get Smart family, and all of them felt appalled by the movie. The credits of these people have more successes, monetarily and award-wise, then any of this movie's creative team.  Here's a brief review from a well-known professional screenwriter, who must remain anonymous:

10. When dealing with classic characters, update the times without altering the characters. For example, Sherlock Holmes was taken from Victorian London to a WW2 milieu in the films starring Basil Rathbone, but was still the Sherlock Holmes who smoked a pipe,  played the violin and quipped “Elementary” a lot. When Indiana Jones was taken from the thirties to the fifties, he still taught at a university, wore a fedora, cracked a whip and was a topflight archeologist. 

There was no good reason to turn Maxwell Smart into a nerdy analyst, childish as opposed to childlike, make him competent one minute then bumbling the next, diluting the character and turning him ostensibly into a supporting player. The same goes for changing Agent 99 into an underage harpy that castrated the main character at every turn, further diminishing him as a compelling figure.  Either cast an age appropriate actress, or simply make 99 an “Alias” style younger agent.  She became “a feathered fish,” neither fish nor fowl.  If they wanted to add a bit of charm, she could have also been a deskbound agent who was thrust into the position of being a field operative in this emergency, thus preserving Maxwell’s seniority which the original 99 would often defer to.

9.  For a main character to be dynamic, just like the original Maxwell, he must be active.  This ludicrous “Smart” distortion is a subordinate with all the traits of an inconsequential supporting player.  He gets the field assignment by default as oppose to heroically volunteering, which would have invariably led to the Chief describing all the imminent dangers and setting up “And loving it.”  Smart does nothing of significance throughout the movie until the obligatory action scene at the end.  It was too late. Part of Max's charm is his overt confidence and bravado that his own bumbling undercuts.  Nevertheless, it makes his victories resonate all the more and also his "everyman" status.  He's one of us trying to be James Bond and finding himself over his head.

8.  The dialogue was uniformly awful, but particularly egregious during the Max and 99 exchanges wherein they stated the obvious and never progressed the scenes or their characters.  During the second act, they get involved in pieces of action... then repeatedly take a break to walk around and comment on either what we’ve just seen or describe what’s about to come.  “We make a good team, don’t you think?”  “I feel good about the mission so far.”  These scenes are some of the most amateurish dialogue in any major motion picture within the last twenty five years.  They’re also beneath the standard of the original TV series.

7.  Avoid treacle.  While “Get Smart” had heart, it wasn’t maudlin or grossly sentimental.  Maxwell Smart was on the side of right and played by a gifted comedian, which made him imminently likable.  To make Maxwell Smart have a weight problem as a means to engender sympathy was cheap and obvious, as well as bizarre.  Even worse, his dance scene with an obese woman was an overt play for the audience’s affection that would embarrass Jerry Lewis at his most mawkish.  The original series was considered hip.  This film is ham-fisted and dumb.

6.  There was no plot, which tends to help espionage stories as there was nothing for Smart and 99 to investigate.

5.  While the original series had action, it was first and foremost a comedy.  The action scenes in this film were an attempt to camouflage the fact that neither the writers or directors had the chops to invent or sustain comic set pieces.  In fact, this is like a Michael Bay version of “Get Smart” wherein CGI and explosions are used out of desperation as opposed to actual cinematic talent.  Compare this to Blake Edwards' "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" or the first "Fletch" to see how a comic character should handle action and production values.

4.  The original series was a satire, that was its point, and the toothless writers of this film, as well as its safe director and lowbrow producers, failed to lampoon the current political scene and missed the obvious target of any espionage based comedy.  Stephen Colbert’s oblivious conservative has more in common with Maxwell Smart than this witless knockoff.  Instead of “Dr. Strangelove” we got “Dr. Doolittle.”  The animated “Wall-E” actually presents a closer approximation of Max and 99’s dynamic, through two robots, amidst an environment that comments on our current world situation.

3.  A spy agency must be depicted as such, with a useful purpose and credibility.  “CONTROL” in this film lacked even the verisimilitude of the MIB organization.  This was a frat house with bullies picking on nerds, lowering not only the intelligence organization, but the intelligence of the film overall.  It was a joke in a film that lacked any.

2.  Forget just this version of“Get Smart,” as these screenwriters failed on the basics of competent writing that's worth paying an ever higher priced admission to watch.  The ultimate failings of this film all point to what was on the page, just like the hallmark of the original series was some of the best comedy writing TV has ever seen from now legendary purveyors.  The screenplay for this film is a textbook of what not to do at every turn.  Those responsible have already been skewered in the reviews, so no need to retread scorched earth.

1.  They made this film.

    Though not a "professional," I pretty much agree with everything that the above comedy legend stated. Actually, I think that person might have been too kind. As regular readers of this site know, I was disappointed with the quality of the scripts and many other things about this production, despite a stellar cast, and have not been shy about stating my disapproval. I felt that the movie was not just bad, but terrible and it all goes back to the script, which made Mr. Belvedere look good. I am biased, in that I am a fan of quality comedy, but given the horrible reviews this movie received from multiple sources, I'm clearly not the only person doesn't like the movie. I have always been in favor of a high-quality, funny, Get Smart movie and I sure wish we had gotten one. I'd also like to mention to all those who accused me of reviewing a "fake script" or "too early a draft" that the scripts I reviewed were pretty much identical to the finished product and that the flaws I've been mentioning were also mentioned by most professional reviewers. My review:

I thought it was awful - unfunny, boring, and pretty much plot-free. The opening scenes (besides being virtually identical to Johnny English) were snooze central. Once Max and 99 embarked on their mission, it got even worse. This castrated version of what was supposed to be Max and the hyper-aggressive 99 were caricatures, not real characters. There wasn't an ounce of believability or humanity in either character. I was told by people who spent significant time on the set that Peter Segal is a technical director in that he spends a lot of time with the lighting, composition, and other technical aspects and very little time with the actors on their performances. It really shows in the inconsistent and shallow characters of this movie, which looks great and has less depth then a Three's Company episode. The flashback scenes where Max and 99 look back on each other to realize their true feelings towards each other were ridiculous because there was no foundation to them. 99 looks back with love on her motorcycle ride with Max? She spent the entire time berating him, not having fun with him. The flashback scene of the motorcycle ride lasted longer onscreen then the actual ride did. It was harder to find the villain in a Scooby Doo episode then to figure out that The Rock was a double agent.

Larabee and Siegfried? Pathetic. I was told that Peter Segal excitedly told several people to let me know that I should be excited too because they had added Larabee, Siegfried, and Hymie. No, what Segal did was take characters already in the script and give them the name of Get Smart characters. In fact, since I have several versions of the script, that's exactly what they did with Siegfried and Shtarker. The villains were just written as villains and given names of basketball players with no effort made to create an original or interesting villain, let alone one that resembled Siegfried. Did the writers of The Dark Knight just write a generic villain and then name him the Joker? Of course not. Larabee as a mean bully? Larabee and Agent 91 as dumb, rude guys who insulted their co-workers instead of working with them? Please. Just awful, with dialogue out of King Frat. Saying the movie Larabee and the show's Larabee were the same because both were dumb CONTROL agents is like saying Mark Texiera and and Marv Throneberry are the same because both are first basemen. Siegfried was a completely generic villain with no charm or charisma, which is tough to do with such a great actor as Terence Stamp. A friend of mine called this movie's version of CONTROL a frat house, with it becoming Revenge of the Nerds and he is right, only Revenge of the Nerds was funny. They even did that with Hymie, having him suddenly become streetwise and bullying back the bullies. Hymie is an innocent and that innocence and naiveté was the source of his humor. If he had been a funny bully, that would have been great, but he was just a stupid bully, with nothing that set him apart other than being super-strong.  The only portrayal that was true or had character was Bill Murray. However, they really could have made that role funny by giving the role to Dave Ketchum and playing up how "I've been in this tree for 40 years." Of course, that would have meant recognizing the original series so that concept was out.

It's not just that it wasn't Get Smart, but that it wasn't funny at all. That's the greatest sin of all. If you want to change Get Smart and its characters, that's fine, but to be unfunny, that's just a complete failure. I went in with low expectations because in his career Pete Segal has shown that his idea of subtle comedy is a kick in the crotch and there were more kicks in the crotch in this movie (six) then laughs. The funniest line in the movie was when Carell tells Anne Hathaway that "your boyfriend is a very bad person." The audience burst into laughter at that one and it was an unintentional joke. Don't even get me going about the dance scene or the adolescent "are you looking at my butt?" as if now 99 is 16 years old. The airplane bathroom scene (in addition to being lifted from another movie) is appalling and irritating to me. It's similar to Segal's sperm bank scene from Naked Gun 33 1/3. Both were pointless and reminded me of jokes done by middle school boys.

The soundtrack was great. I loved how the composer worked in the original theme in the action sequences. It's important to mention that the movie's theme is clearly based on Irving Szathmary's original theme, despite Szathmary receiving no credit until the DVD release.

I thought it failed as a comedy, an action movie, and as a Get Smart movie. I could do paragraphs on that, but I won't. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen - that goes to Nothing But Trouble, but it's the worst I've seen in years.

Now, let's take a look at what the major reviewers had to say:

• " Staggeringly bad. It's a movie that spoofs intelligence in the most unintelligent way possible and stretches the boundaries of plot-free filmmaking into frontiers until now explored only by former cast members of 'Saturday Night Live.' Austin Powers is one of many reference points for a movie that also cribs from Entrapment, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the recent Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay without ever bringing anything new or comedically competent to the table. - Glenn Whipp, LA Daily News

• " As a reworking of one of the great 1960s TV comedies, you'd think being funny would be its main goal. But you would be wrong. Very, very wrong. Like its protagonist, in-over-his-head secret agent Maxwell Smart, "Get Smart" yearns to be something it's not. Unaccountably eager to walk in the footsteps of James Bond, "Get Smart" neglects the laughs and amps up the action, resulting in a not very funny comedy joined at the hip to a not very exciting spy movie. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. One has to wonder what the late Don Adams, one of the people the film is dedicated to, would have thought of this concoction. If you've never experienced the pleasures of the original yourself, it's fair to say that brief clips available free on YouTube provide more laughs than this entire benighted enterprise. " - Los Angeles Times

• " Remaking "Get Smart" for the big screen might have sounded like a bad idea, but the movie shows it to have been something else: a really bad idea. As it stands, "Get Smart," the movie, is an action comedy that represents the worst of both worlds. Like a bad action movie, it's bloated, confused and convoluted, relying too much on extended action sequences that are heavy on computer effects. And like the worst comedies, "Get Smart" is about as funny as a gently smiling mime. It couldn't buy a laugh in a nitrous oxide factory with a fistful of clown noses. " - San Francisco Chronicle
   
• " It's funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we'd expect from a new Bond movie itself. And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting. " - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

• " 'Get Smart' got lost. Max Smart is played by the admirable Steve Carell, who is desperately looking for deadpan jokes in all the wrong places. His sidekick is played by the lissome Anne Hathaway, who also seems willing to go along with a gag if only she could find one. They are all strapped to a hurtling plot line that is heading from one fireball to the next, with only a few not-so-hot Bush-Cheney jokes to divert them. And us. " - Time

• " This clumsy adaptation of the beloved espionage series stumbles more than its bumbling hero. Sadly, gags fall flat, one-liners lack pizzazz and the leads generate little chemistry. 'Get Smart' is just another big, dumb summer movie and should have heeded its title's advice. " - Matt Stevens, E! Reviews

• "In this distressingly generic spy spoof, it's not Maxwell who's clueless, but the filmmakers. I knew the movie was in trouble when Smart is mistaken for a terrorist on an airplane and gets tackled by a security agent- it's almost identical to a gag in "Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay," except this time it isn't funny. Director (Pete) Segal is a comedy specialist lacking any apparent sense of humor. Making 'Smart' smart is a classic example of missing the joke." - Newsweek

• "'Get Smart' the movie has precious little to do with 'Get Smart' the iconic TV series from the 1960s, but then again the movie has precious little to do with screen comedy, either. This is a slap-dash effort whose producers threw money and stunts onscreen instead of the satirical gags and one-liners that made the old spy spoof so memorable. The overriding factor here is that the filmmakers -- this would include ham-fisted director Peter Segal and the punchless writing team of Tom J. Astle & Matt Ember -- don't know what the joke is. ...familiar lines crop up in the wrong places and the timing of gags, so indelibly rendered in the series, misfires on nearly every occasion." - The Hollywood Reporter

• " Instead of the show's wacky, slapstick tone, Get Smart presents itself as an action-filled spy movie that just happens to be really funny. And for the most part, it succeeds. Credit much of that success to Steve Carell, who as a reconstituted Maxwell Smart strikes just the right tone and manner. " - Dallas Morning News

• " Director Peter Segal dispenses with just about everything that made the series fun in the first place. Oh, the film credits Brooks and Henry as "Creative Consultants" (a likely story), and the script reluctantly trots out the catchphrases. But then it just throws them away. And in changing the IQ of the lead character, the movie ends up playing like a Pink Panther movie without the bungling Inspector Clouseau. If Max is no longer Max, why resurrect the property in the first place? We watch the movie version wondering whether anyone involved actually watched, liked, or cared about capturing the spirit of, the TV series. Segal (Anger Management, 50 First Dates, The Longest Yard) never finds a tone that both celebrates and updates the original. His neither-fish-nor-fowl approach leaves us in a limbo that's neither fresh nor nostalgic. And his climax, featuring explosions and a car chase, is monumentally unfunny. " - All Headline News

• " I liked it. I liked it a lot. I thought he (Steve Carell) was the perfect choice. " - Mel Brooks (Ain't It Cool News)

One More Review

"As one of the writers of the original "Get Smart" TV series, I was dismayed by the new, flawed "Get Smart" movie--I never understood why remakes don't at least talk to the original material writers. Maybe it's a kind of immature tantrum, 'I want to do it myself, mom.' That said, for the writers of the next remake, here's a bit of advice: The essence, the fun of the Don Adams character was his child-like confidence and his bravado (not unlike the character often played by Bob Hope) presaging the inevitable catastrophic blunder. 'Sorry about that.' Any writer charged with vetting agent 86 should start by studying the origin of the character, Don's early nightclub routines. His defense attorney bit: 'Look at those trim ankles, the well turned calf. Now I ask you. Are those the legs of a homicidal maniac?'"
         - Joseph Cavella, author of How to Write Comedy in Hollywood.

What's This About the Movie and Legal Trouble?

Industry trades have been reporting that famed intellectual property lawyer Marc Toberoff was planning legal action against Warner Brothers and this movie. Toberoff has stated that he does not represent the Adams estate in their dealings against WB on this movie. However, as I reported earlier, he did represent Mel Brooks and Buck Henry when WB tried to deny that they created Get Smart and he did get that settled in their favor. However, a studio source has reconfirmed that there is legal action against the movie on the behalf of the estate of Don Adams. As Adams often talked about how he took ownership rights for Get Smart in lieu of a large salary, the legal situation probably involves the degree of rights and compensation involved.

More importantly, let me review the legal action Toberoff did take when representing Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. In a purely financial move dictated by studio lawyers, Warner Brothers claimed that Mel and Buck created the show as a "work-for-hire" for Talent Associates, and therefore did not deserve credit or any financial compensation for creating the show. The legal eagles behind this move forbid any contact between the movie's creative team and Stern, Brooks, or Henry. When the movie began shooting on March 21, 2007 this edict was still in effect. Then, on April 11th, Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood Elsewhere released this story as a rumor substantiated by a very reliable anonymous source. The negative backlash was immediate and intense. Within 48 hours of Wells' bombshell, the lawsuit was dropped and Warner Brothers signed a deal with Mel and Buck to be "creative consultants" to the movie. However, the script had been completed and over three weeks of principal photography had been completed, so their input was not major, nor did they have any say in the creation of the script or the movie, as there was NO CONTACT between the original creative team and the movie's creative team until April 12th at the earliest. It's a shame that a ridiculous legal fight (not endorsed by the movie's creative team) to increase the studio's profits stood in the way of allowing Stern, Brooks, and Henry the chance to consult before the major characterizations and plot points were established shooting started. I firmly believe that if there wasn't such a negative backlash about their ignoring the original creative team, including the 10,000+ of you who signed my online petition, that none of this would have come about. I find it fascinating to suddenly hear the "new" history of this movie's creation, which includes a completely different attitude towards the original and its creators, as they backpedal quicker than Bill Clinton after they found Monica's stained dress. It's quite a different story from what they were saying when production on this movie began, but it's gratifying to hear this turnaround. However, let's be quite clear - this movie's concept was created and written WITHOUT ANY INPUT from the original creative team. Despite what publicists are trying to get you to believe, this movie featured Pete Segal's Get Smart, not Mel Brooks', Leonard Stern's, or Buck Henry's. It will be up to you to decide whether Segal's version has the same style, class, and wit that characterized the original.

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