Get Smart

I'm a bit on the young side to be acquainted with Maxwell Smart - a television spy hero of yesteryear who forms the basis for this objectionably unobjectionable Steve Carrell vehicle.

The basic gist is that Smart, aka Agent 86, is a kind of buffoonish American operative who, despite his cackhandedness, always gets the job done, aided and abetted by a bevy of one-liners and a foxy female sidekick (here played by Anne Hathaway).

The plot is not especially important - it's the usual swashbuckle of foreign spies, raging bosses and a dumbo President (plus a lot of pepped-up action sequences and special effects). Carrell fills his role nicely, and Hathaway certainly fits the bill.

In short, there's nothing really wrong with Get Smart, beyond the fact, of course, that it is so thoroughly formulaic and so tediously predictable that it feels like one long motorway drive of a movie.  ·