Movie: Get Smart

Get Smart / Dustin Rowles

I loathe reviewing movies like Get Smart because they give me so little to work with. It is not a movie that warrants our scathingness, but neither is it a film that should be lauded as the cinematic equivalent of the smell of a baby’s neck. It is amazingly unexceptional, but remarkably diverting. It’s a pretty bad action pic, but a pretty good comedy, making it a decent action-comedy. It has an atrocious script, but an exceptional cast. Indeed, it is to movies what Phoenix or Denver is to cities: A place you don’t mind being, but not exactly a city on your summer vacation calendar. Or what The Fray is to music: Very listenable if it’s on, but not something you call up on the ole’ iPod.

It is what Raisinets are to candy, what Burger King is to fast food, what Olive Garden is to chain restaurants, what the seventh season of “Scrubs,” is to television, what the Minnesota Twins are to baseball, what the Camry is to automobiles, what tomatoes are to a ham sandwich or a dollop of sour cream is to a nice burrito: You can give or take it, whichever. Ain’t nothing nobody is going to feel passionately about one way or another, but neither is Get Smart a movie you can get too down on. It is the missionary position with an old friend on a break between girlfriends: It kills the time. For everything good about it, there’s something just as bad. Full Story →