Not very ‘Smart’ or funny

Popcorn version loses the snap of the popular ’60s television show

‘Get Smart’
Director: Peter Segal
Stars: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin
Rating: PG-13
Grade: 2 Globes

The producers of “Get Smart” had all the elements anyone could ask for to make a sweet little summer movie: a script based on a popular ’60s television show, a roster of some of the most talented comedians working today (Steve Carell! Alan Arkin!), and, clearly, a mighty generous budget.

The cash here seems to be the only thing they saw fit to put to good use. Steve Carell plays the nerdy Maxwell Smart, an analyst for the spy group Control, who scores big on multiple choice exams, writes 600-page reports, and suspects coded meanings in the words “decaf coffee” and “muffin,” but has yet to be let loose with the real agents in the field. (This is an actor who made “Office” ennui into an art form, but here, the jokes are more junior-high). He gets his chance when a bust compromises the identities of all the spies in his department — except for the lovely and competent Agent 99, Ms. Anne Hathaway, who, thanks to plastic surgery, is disguised and sent back into the field as his partner.

“Get Smart” takes a smart, stylish TV show that relied on one-liners and satire, and turns it into a bloated popcorn movie that relies on explosions, midair dives and poop jokes. (And by the way, when your skydiving scene is not only a rip-off of a scene from “Point Break,” but a rip-off of a scene from “Point Break” that is so well-known, it has appeared — and had its physical possibility called into question — on an episode of “MythBusters,” you have a serious problem with originality). Underneath it all hovers the outline of the film it could have been. Instead, it is depressing. Not Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor in “The Island” sort of depressing, but a waste of genuinely talented actors nonetheless.