Steve Carell’s Get Smart topped the weekend box office with a $39.2 million opening, well exceeding its hoped-for haul. Meanwhile, Mike Myers’ The Love Guru - which was derided by at least one critic as “one of the worst films of the year” - fell way, way (”Way!”) shy of projections, placing No. 4 with a mere $14 mil.

Rounding out the weekend’s top five were Kung Fu Panda ($21.7 mil), which I’m quite literally just about to watch with my sons at the Cape Cod Cinema; The Incredible Hulk ($21.6 mil, now just a few mil shy of the original Hulk’s overall take) and The Happening ($10 mil).

credit: tvguide

• “Get Smart” spies victory at box office
• The Get Smart Crew talk about international espionage

Get Smart (* * 1/2 out of four) is bright enough, but stops short of being clever.

This contemporary remake of the iconic ’60s TV comedy could have used more of the sly wit of show creators Buck Henry and Mel Brooks and less of the antic humor and overblown action sequences that typify Hollywood’s summer output.

While the film is breezily entertaining, it also is surprisingly generic, despite the likable Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart. Carell does a fine, goofy job. But you wish he could have tapped into his nuanced and darker comic side that is so hilariously revealed in TV’s The Office. Anne Hathaway is about as effective as Agent 99 as can be imagined, short of the original, Barbara Feldon. But the sentimental facets of her character dilute her sardonic and sassy nature. Read the rest of this entry »

• Get Smart then and now
• Get Smart Review: Ebert

Chicago Sun Times

By Roger Ebert

The closing credits of “Get Smart” mention Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, creators of the original TV series, as “consultants.” Their advice must have been: “If it works, don’t fix it.” There have been countless comic spoofs of the genre founded by James Bond, but “Get Smart” (both on TV and now in a movie) is one of the best. It’s funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we’d expect from a new Bond movie itself. And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting.

Steve Carell makes an infectious Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but ambitious and unreasonably self-confident agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency in rivalry with the CIA. His job is to decipher overheard conversations involving agents of KAOS, its Russian counterpart. At this he is excellent: What does it mean that KAOS agents discuss muffins? That they have a high level of anxiety, of course, because muffins are a comfort food. Brilliant, but he misses the significance of the bakery they’re also discussing - a cookery for high-level uranium. Read the rest of this entry »

• Get Smart then and now
• Get Smart Panel to be at Wonder Con 2008

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The new spy spoof “Get Smart” took an early lead at the weekend box office in North America, while Mike Myers bombed with his latest comedy “The Love Guru,” according to first-day sales data issued on Saturday.

“Get Smart,” a remake of the ’60s television series of the same name, earned an estimated $13.35 million on Friday, said distributor Warner Bros. Pictures.

The Time Warner-owned studio said the film would end up with about $37 million — slightly ahead of forecasts — once ticket sales for Saturday and Sunday are factored in. Estimates for the three-day period will be issued on Sunday, followed by final data on Monday.

“The Love Guru,” meanwhile, opened at No. 4 with just $5.4 million, according to tracking firm Box Office Mojo, and will fall far short of the $20 million range that Hollywood pundits had picked for the weekend. Paramount Pictures, the film’s Viacom Inc-owned distributor, declined to comment. Read the rest of this entry »

• Get Smart topped the box office!
• Get Smart Panel to be at Wonder Con 2008

Los Angeles Times: A modified moniker is often part of a new image

Here’s a news flash: The Rock is no more. It’s not even Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson but merely Dwayne Johnson, plain vanilla, regular guy, would-be action-hero for the text-message set.

For us mere mortals, it’s always slightly mystifying to watch celebrities and their names mutate. Madonna Ciccone to Madonna. Fabio Lanzoni to Fabio. Prince Rogers Nelson to Prince to The Artist formerly known as Prince to the unruly acronym TAFKAP. Read the rest of this entry »

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