Get Smart (2008)(Warner Bros)

Source:Warner Bros

The action comedy "Get Smart" sends CONTROL agent Maxwell Smart (Steve Carell) on his most dangerous and important mission: to thwart the latest plot for world domination by the evil crime syndicate known as KAOS.

It also happens to be his very first mission.

When the headquarters of secret U.S. spy agency CONTROL is attacked and the identities of its agents compromised, the Chief (Alan Arkin) has no choice but to promote his ever-eager analyst Maxwell Smart, who has always dreamt of working in the field alongside his idol, stalwart superstar Agent 23 (Dwayne Johnson). Smart is partnered instead with the only other agent whose identity has not been compromised: the lovely-but-lethal veteran Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway).

As Smart and 99 get closer to unraveling KAOS' master plan--and each other--they discover that key KAOS operative Siegfried (Terence Stamp) and his sidekick, Shtarker (Ken Davitian), are scheming to cash in with their network of terror. With no field experience and little time, Smart--armed with nothing but a few spy-tech gadgets and his unbridled enthusiasm--must defeat KAOS if he is to save the day.

Director Peter Segal approached "Get Smart" as both a filmmaker and a fan. "This was an iconic show from the 1960s, a true classic and one of my favorites," he says. "I loved it. It was smart, irreverent and hilarious."

Says producer Charles Roven, "We didn't want to recreate it but to contemporize it--to make it work for our time with a modern perspective and action sequences that aren't only there to punctuate the laughs but are worthy of any thriller. We wanted to bring this world of super-spies into a new era with the scale and scope it truly deserves on the big screen."

Segal discovered that just imagining the familiar characters and some brand new ones in today's headline-worthy situations sparked a thousand ideas and jokes, inspired by the same savvy humor that made the series--the brainchild of comedy mavericks Mel Brooks and Buck Henry--so memorable.

"Our goal was to embrace the spirit of what Mel and Buck created and bring it to a new generation. The movie pays homage to the touchstones of the series; its irreverence, political satire and some of the catchphrases that are now part of our culture," says Segal, "but with a fresh story, a 2008 point of view and a style and energy all its own. The idea was to make a movie that offers as much to new viewers as longtime fans and, bottom line, to just make it funny as hell so it doesn't matter if you know the history or not."

Producer Alex Gartner credits Segal with "the ability to blend smart comedy [pun intended] with serious action, neither of which is easy and certainly not easily meshed, but it's something at which Peter excels and why we wanted him to direct. There's a lot of physical humor here, but played against a realistic backdrop."

Steve Carell, who stars as Maxwell Smart and also serves as an executive producer, sums it up this way: "I'd say it's 80% comedy, 20% action, 15% heart, 35% romance, 10% adventure and probably less than 1% horror. Put that all together and you have more than 100%, which is more, really, than you can expect from any movie."

As the movie opens, Max is hard at work deciphering suspicious international chatter from surveillance tapes and preparing voluminous reports for his CONTROL colleagues. He is such a valuable analyst that his boss, the Chief, is regrettably unable to offer him the one thing Max wants most in life and has been training for so diligently: to become a field agent.

Says Carell, "Max is incredibly earnest and dedicated at what he does but wants desperately to prove himself in the field."

"In this aspect, as in all his comedies," notes Segal, "Steve brings a measure of humanity into play so that you genuinely feel for him. His Max is a man who sees this opportunity as his final shot, and that fuels a lot of his decisions and the subsequent action."

"His secret fear, like that of many people, is that he may have missed his chance, that it's just never going to happen for him," adds screenwriter Matt Ember. "Then circumstances catapult him into his fantasy career overnight. He gets a new lease on life."

When longtime CONTROL nemesis KAOS attacks the agency's headquarters and exposes the identities of its key operatives, the Chief has no choice but to upgrade Max's status to Agent 86 and dispatch him on the kind of dangerous mission that would challenge even a veteran.

Even though it's under the worst possible circumstances, Max can't help being ecstatic.

"Clearly he has a lot to learn and he makes mistakes," Lazar admits. "But just as clearly he has his own talents that emerge as the action progresses and he comes through in unexpected ways that even surprise his reluctant partner, Agent 99. Max is not only by-the-book, but he knows the book better than anyone else."

Still, as Roven points out, "Although Max has studied the agents' manual and passed all the tests, he's never been in a situation where people are actually, well, shooting at him."

There's no easing in, no learning curve; he has to hit the ground running. Literally.

Max is partnered, by default, with Agent 99, the only top CONTROL operative whose identity was uncompromised by the recent breach. Says Anne Hathaway, who stars in the role, "99 is disappointed, to say the least, about working with a rookie, and everything he does in the first five minutes of their meeting only confirms her worst fears. So not only does Max have to prove himself to his boss, he has to prove himself worthy of working alongside this strong-willed woman who is obviously not going to take it easy on him."

Segal asserts that the accident-prone but tenacious secret agent was never meant to be a bungler. "Rather, the humor here springs from Max's unbridled enthusiasm, combined with a woeful lack of practical experience.

"But he's quick to recover. His mind is always working and he's confident that everything he does is right even when it sometimes goes awry," the director adds.

Such is the charm of Maxwell Smart, as described by Leonard Stern, who was an executive producer and Emmy Award-winning writer on the original series and has a cameo in the film as a bewildered pilot yanked from his plane in the name of national security. "You root for Max. You want him to do well. He's indomitable. For every fall he takes he gets up immediately and ignores it, dusts himself off with aplomb and attacks the problem another way."

"Watching the show I always got the impression that Maxwell Smart was no fool," says Carell, a longtime fan. "I saw him as a resourceful, capable guy who had principles he was willing to fight for. He didn't always take the route others might have taken but still, even if it was counter-intuitive, he managed to come out on top."

By presenting Max as a newly minted agent whose abilities haven't yet been tested, Carell begins from a different place than series star Don Adams, of whom he says, "Don was so distinctive, there was no realistic way to recreate his approach and his cadence, and I didn't want to do an impersonation. Instead, I wanted to tap into the essence of the character and the show's rich template and, without taking anything away from that, create something new and fresh in a way that honors the original but also stands on its own."

Regarding CONTROL, the covert agency to which Maxwell Smart has devoted his life, and KAOS, the group it has vowed to obliterate, part of the "Get Smart" mystique is in its depiction of the ongoing struggle between these rival spy agencies whose very existence is unknown except at the highest levels of government.

"CONTROL was conceived as a secret American spy agency focused solely on defeating KAOS, an international organization committed to doing everything they can to create, well, chaos," offers Ewing. "The two are eternally opposing forces that, in the larger sense, represent good and evil." And, in the "Get Smart" sense, represent myriad opportunities for comedy.

In a world defined by CONTROL and KAOS, you never know if a pen is just a pen or possibly also a dart gun. Phone booths become elevators. There are convoluted passwords and secret codes, fantastic devices that would baffle James Bond and undercover agents who can pop up when and where you least expect it.

"The show aired during the Cold War and Vietnam and reflected some of those concerns. We likewise took inspiration from today's headlines," says Segal, in reference to a pervasive public consciousness of clandestine events occurring worldwide. "With the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and potentially more than a hundred similar agencies operating in the U.S. alone, the idea that underground organizations such as CONTROL and KAOS could exist doesn't seem so far-fetched. There's still a lot going on politically to satirize and skewer."

"In other words, in the 40-some years since 'Get Smart' aired in an atmosphere of international tension and suspicion, not much has changed," quips Stern.

Clearly, we need Maxwell Smart now more than ever.