Hollywood has yet again dipped into the Pot of Unoriginal Ideas with the Ladle of Mediocrity, so hold out your bowls like poor Dickensian orphans, America for a steaming pile of Get Smart, the movie.
Perhaps with Steve Carell cast in the role originally made famous by the late Don Adams, this movie might be worth seeing, but when is the incessant retooling of old TV shows into feature films going to stop? Has the entertainment system become so masturbatory that it can't even look beyond itself anymore for fresh, new ideas?
At any rate, it was reported recently that Anne Hathaway has also been added to the cast in the role of Agent 99. Peter Segal (Tommy Boy, 50 First Dates) is directing the film, which begins shooting in March.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-21-2006 @ 7:35PM
Keith said...
I guess I'm just getting tired of the constant harangue against "Movie-Hollywood" for adapting TV shows into movies. Hollywood has always adapted properties from other media, just as every other media has done since ... forever. What's the difference between adapting "Get Smart" into a film, than adapting a novel? Or a play?
Before movies, plays were adapted from books. Then films were adapted from plays and books. Then TV Shows were adapted from films, plays and books (I won't even get into radio shows and comics or remakes of other films). Entertainment media have always borrowed from each other. TV shows survive in printed form long after the shows are off the air (Buffy, Diagnosis Murder), highly successful plays are adapted from movies adapted from fairy tales (Beauty and the Beast) or legends (Spamalot), and even some ping-ponging has started with movies adapted into Broadway musicals adapted back into movies (The Producers).
The biggest problem as I see it isn't that Hollywood is unoriginal in their source material, it's that so many of these adaptations are utter crap (Dukes of Hazzard, Wild Wild West, I Spy). If more of them were quality films (The Fugitive, Addams Family) we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
So, feel free to say all you want to say against Hollyood on this topic, but don't delude yourself that they are alone or that this is anything new. And be sure to include Broadway, Comic Books, Television, and the publishing industry in your diatribe.
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11-21-2006 @ 10:50PM
Dwacon said...
Carrell did a good "Uncle Arthur" impersonation in that awful TV adaptataion... maybe he will do a good Maxwell Smart in a...
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11-21-2006 @ 9:55PM
Tim said...
Someone's already made a movie based on Get Smart. Released in 1980, it was called The Nude Bomb and actually starred Don Adams (but not Barbara Feldon). As I recall it actually was a large bomb.
I have no problem with people adapting television series into movies. I just wish they would do a better job of re-imagining the original concepts rather than just trying to evoke some kind of nostalgia.
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11-22-2006 @ 3:47AM
Paul Little said...
Well this has been in the works since before Carrell was a "big star" from "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "The Office". I'm just glad, with his recent success, that they're still going through with it -- because if anyone in Hollywood could play Maxwell Smart, it'd be him.
I just re-watched the "Get Smart" pilot the other day, and while I thought it was brilliant 15 years ago when I first saw the show, I thought it was only mildly amusing. Still enjoyable and smart, sure, but not out-of-this-world phenomenal. So I find it funny that so many people are upset about "classic television" being ruined by these remakes, when the original wasn't as great as our nostalgia will have us believe.
"Remakes" are not a new thing in any form of art, not just along the novel/theatre/TV show/movie line that Keith mentions. Completely original and fresh ideas are great when they come, but not many people seemed to complain when Elvis made hits out of other people's songs 50 years ago.
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11-22-2006 @ 10:14AM
kel said...
Come to think about it, Steve Carell would make an excellent Inspector Gadget. I know they've already made a movie about that cartoon, but it sucked. Feel free to "reimagine" that one, Hollywood.
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11-23-2006 @ 5:17AM
Brent McKee said...
The Nude Bomb was a huge bomb (one might even describe it as an atomic bomb - it was that bad). There were a lot of reasons, the biggest being that someone forgot to put in the funny. And despite the presence of Sylvia Kristel (the star of "Emanuelle") there was no nudity. I don't think that anyone connected with the project (except Don Adams and maybe not even him) understood what made the original work. Which of course is the big risk in any modern remake. In the same way that the people who did the movie of "The Beverly Hillbillies" didn't understand that the show was used to satirize the trends and foibles of modern life, "Get Smart" was a satire of spy novels and popular culture. Steve Carrel is an extremely talented actor but it isn't going to be the acting that makes or breaks this project, it will be whether the writers understand what made the original work.
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