Strange how Get Smart collects such an ideal cast and misuses it. Also peculiar how the film tries to be an action comedy but never really manages to get the action and the comedy right at the same time. On the surface, from the trailers and ads, the players all certainly seem primed and ready to attempt to capture the spirit of the original 60s spy spoof TV show. It is just that they are shackled by a lugubrious screenplay that just looked at the summer calendar and forgot to fill the screenplay with actual funny jokes.

What a bummer because Steve Carell is just about the perfect choice among modern comedians to play Maxwell Smart, the bumbling analyst turned agent originally played by Don Adams and created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. He works for a top U.S. secret agency called CONTROL where he deciphers cryptic information from the terrorist organization called KAOS. He, however, wants to rise above being just an analyst and become a field agent. The Chief (Alan Arkin) has doubts and believes Smart’s talents lie strictly with intelligence. Plans change though when The Chief learns that all his agents have been compromised and must hire Smart to become Agent 86 and save the day.

As fans of the TV show know, the comical appeal was seeing a bumbling guy who is a little too cock-sure to realize that he does not quite have the chops to be an agent like his knockout partner, Agent 99 (played originally by Barbara Feldon and here by Anne Hathaway), who occasionally has to bail him out. The miscalculation of the screenplay by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember is quickly losing that potential of seeing Smart survive almost purely by luck and turning Smart into a skilled agent practically overnight. Sure, there are a few other initial bumbles along the way as in that largely seen trailer clip when Smart misses crashing into a window and says, “Missed it by that much” or when he inadvertently causes a curtain of beads to fall apart and somehow makes a crony trip over them later. But why hire Carell to carry the movie when his deadpan comedic talent is not fully utilized and the actor himself will be replaced by stuntmen and green screen to fall from dizzying heights or perform acrobatic moves?

The director, Peter Segal handles all the stunts and action sequences quite well from a technical standpoint, of course, and after making a few lighthearted, successful comedies like 50 First Dates and several inane ones like The Longest Yard and Tommy Boy, I guess this may be his calling card for making more summer action thrillers. But I am not sure that a summer thriller with much too prolonged “serious” action sequences is what Get Smart should be. Maybe the director and the writers guessed (probably correctly) that most of the audience don’t recall the original show but for those like me who have seen the show or any other Mel Brooks spoof, are we to be satisfied merely with just a handful of split-second sight gags tucked in here and there? Perhaps I should not have expected so much considering Segal is working from a screenplay from the writers of the Matthew McConnaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker romantic comedy bomb, Failure to Launch.