Nobody comes away from Get Smart with their reputation enhanced

I like Steve Carell. He's been in some stinkers but he was excellent in Little Miss Sunshine and on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He more or less saved Dan in Real Life from total disaster, especially since it contained one of the most annoying families in film history. As opposed to families like the Kerrigans in the Castle, who are meant to be annoying, we are supposed to like the family in Dan in Real Life. In fact they are the kind of family that has crossword competitions and family aerobics sessions. The family-as-relationship-counsellor theme was done much better in While You Were Sleeping which managed to be both cheesy and enjoyable, while Dan in Real Life was just irritating.

I suppose that Carell is most famous for his role as Michael Scott in the Office. In Get Smart he appears to be playing Michael Scott starring as Maxwell Smart. Certainly it feels very close to Michael Scott at various points. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but hopefully it isn't a sign that he is being typecast. It could be that he just isn't a leading man. His better films (Anchorman, Little Miss Sunshine) don't feature him as a leading man. The 40 Year Old Virgin hinted that he could be the leading man, but he hasn't really lived up to that potential since.

Anne Hathaway is building a fairly strange film career. She started off in roles like the Princess Diaries films and seemed to quickly want to get out of that type of role. She started that by appearing in the Devil Wears Prada and Becoming Jane, but they were really just grown up versions of the Princess Diaries. In amongst all that though was an appearance in Brokeback Mountain. She tends to be overlooked when that film is considered (as does Michelle Williams), but that is the kind of role she should be aiming for. I notice that her next few films include Rachel Getting Married and Bride Wars. They could be Walter Hill style essays on the modern urban condition, but I don't expect it. So what she is doing in this film is beyond me. Echoing Gwyneth Paltrow's bizarre appearance in Ironman, she is merely here to watch Carell and emote about his behaviour. She's wasted in this film.

Get Smart passed me by as a TV show. I don't know if it is an accurate revival of the show, but it does point to two rather depressing features of modern film. Firstly it is yet one more 60s/70s show or film being ironically revived for a quick profit. For every Starsky and Hutch there are about 10 appalling recreations, mostly starring Nicole Kidman it seems - Bewitched, the Stepford Wives, etc, etc. More depressing though is the way that Mel Brooks' career is being recycled. Brooks long ago stopped coming up with new ideas - High Anxiety was over 30 years ago - and has since concentrated on parodying existing characters. Perhaps we should look at his recent output in this light, that he is now parodying himself. Except I don't think that this is the case. The remake of the Producers is truly awful. The only good jokes are those that were from the original and these are mostly hashed.

But despite all this, Get Smart isn't actually that bad - it just isn't that good either. In one scene Carell, in the toilet of an aeroplane, shoots himself repeatedly in the face with the harpoon feature of his Swiss Army knife before accidentally pressing the eject button and plummeting without his parachute. If you find that to be the height of comedy, you might like the film better than I did. I did enjoy it though; it's just I think that you're better off waiting for it to come out on DVD. Actually, save your money and just wait for it be on TV over Christmas next year.