Maxwell Smart, as played by Carell, is as eager as a Labrador to get out of his cubicle and into the field. He gets a shot after the identities of almost all of Control’s agents are compromised and the chief (Alan Arkin) has no choice but to send out Smart next to the suave Agent 23, played by Dwayne Johnson, and the brutally beautiful Agent 99. (Anne Hathaway gets her vixen on to surprisingly convincing ends.) They are all, of course, working together to thwart world domination by the evildoers from KAOS.
The going gets tricky after that. Any attempt to bring a treasured television program to the big screen needs to strike a balance between feeding the die-hards and wooing recruits, and the cultural penetration of the original Get Smart (mention entering the “cone of silence” at a conference table today, and everyone will get the drift) means that some part of the audience will arrive with great expectations. But the rest, including the young people who make or break a big movie? Segal said that by making the film an origin story — where did Maxwell Smart come from, exactly? — the creators tried to lay down enough track for people new to the world of Control versus KAOS to climb aboard.
“We had to make something that was entirely new for those people who didn’t know anything about the television show but make sure that old fans were not left out in the cold,” Segal said. He acknowledged that he was preoccupied with the opinion of one particular audience member and held back tears of joy when Brooks called and said he liked it. Brooks, who watched The Nude Bomb implode, said Get Smart is a far more successful extension of the franchise, which may have something to do with the passage of time. “Maybe the secret is to skip a generation so that you can get the benefit from both nostalgia and discovery,” he said.
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