Talk to the Shoe
It may disappoint you to learn I’ve never liked Steve Carell and his leading role in Get Smart fills me with distrust and suspicion. But Anne Hathaway is an inspired choice, and the anecdotal evidence of her actorly ad-libbing seems promising. Unlike the sky-diving sequence. I hold out hope. But if this turns out to be The Avengers (1998) meets Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, I propose that Carell be permanently installed beneath the cone of silence.
(Fun facts: Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle features one of Beck’s best songs, “Real Good Time,” which nonetheless had to be sung by Pink to make it into the movie. The Avengers almost featured a track called “Big Boots,” a reworked-but-abandoned version of cult never-recorded Radiohead tune “Man o’ War.” You can see the band caught in studio hell, halfway between rework and abandon, in the nightmarish tour documentary Meeting People is Easy.)
The great thing about Full Throttle was its total disregard for coherent plotting. Every scene works in exactly the same way: the Angels show up at a location, engage in some shenanigans (probably in slow motion, with some sort of late 90s hit blasting), and then they discover a clue that says, more or less, “Go to _______ location.” They go to that location, and it all starts over again. The cool thing about this is that, for all practical purposes, you could watch the scenes in any order and they’d make just as much sense. Mix and match!
— Peter Suderman · Jan 14, 03:04 PM · #
Thanks for this post. Now I know to take your critical judgments with more than a grain of salt. Steve Carell is a very capable and experienced performer who has given strong and varied performances. Even if you don’t agree with that assessment, it is obvious to all but you that there is no one in movies today better matched to the role of Maxwell Smart (which is not actually a fate that Steve Carell may crave). Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, simply gives the same performance in everything I’ve seen her in, and it’s not interesting enough to keep seeing. I don’t suggest she won’t be competent and enjoyable in Get Smart, but there is nothing particularly inspired in casting her. In short, Get Smart may well be as much a train-wreck as The Avengers meets Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, but it won’t be because they cast Steve Carell.
— David A · Jan 15, 11:23 PM · #