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By Cole Smithey

‘Get Smart’

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Although its chemistry never gels and Steve Carell is under-directed by Peter Segal, “Get Smart” pulls off a sufficient number of goofy action set pieces to earn its entertainment value. Aside from the ever-flat presence of Dwayne Johnson (here playing Agent 23, a good-guy spy with a jealousy issue) it’s Anne Hathaway who drags the comedy down due to a condescending attitude that permeates her role as sexpot spy Agent 99. Where Barbara Feldon played the television roll of Maxwell Smart’s capable partner with a knowing wink, Hathaway takes her hairstyle too seriously to be in on the joke, namely that Smart is an idiot savant spy with a quick tongue. Don’t look for a story here because there isn’t one, but that’s as it should be for the post-post-cold-war treatment of Russia as an excuse for great location shooting in Moscow. Alan Arkin gives a snappy performance as the U.S. spy agency CONTROL Chief, referred to only as the Chief. For a slick Hollywood summer comedy, “Get Smart” barely does the trick.

There’s some confusion early on about the origin of our modern-day hero, even as the movie sets out to mark that exact territory. Smart enters a stately building that conceals CONTROL’s top-secret headquarters walking through a museum lobby containing his predecessor’s artifacts. The little red Sunbeam Tiger convertible, of Don Adams’ television days as Smart, sits in a glass case, as does the ionic telephone shoe that he repeatedly used to great comic effect. But rather than create any common sense logic that might allow Carell to represent an inheriting son to Adams’ incarnation, this Smart is thrown in cold as a report-writing nerd desperate to prove his abilities as a CONTROL agent. It’s a set-up that doesn’t work, but we play along because at least Smart enters through the television show’s famous series of vault doors that lead to a phone booth that takes Smart down to his subterranean command center.

It’s telling that its best scene occurs on the dance floor of a grand ballroom where Agent 99 dances with a suave Russian baddie overseeing the festivities. A jealous Smart walks past a group of well-dressed hotties to gain permission from an overweight woman to be his dance partner. Smart and amiable new friend set about dancing a tango that steals all the thunder from Agent 99 and her urbane partner. The scene works especially well because we enjoy watching Smart get some not-so-subtle revenge against Agent 99’s haughty treatment of him as a lesser agent. But it also points out one of the script’s major missteps in creating an uncomfortable relationship between the main characters that leaves us wanting them to separate rather than work together.

Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created the television series that launched Feldon and Adams to fame. Full of quotable one-liners, the show’s humor relied on a repetition of ideas and phrases that functioned as twitching devices for laughs. Smart always “missed it by that much” or recognized a devious spy ploy as “the old (fill in the blank) trick.” Yet screenwriters Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember abandon all of the television show’s laugh-pulling jokes while rubber-stamping its rival spy organization KAOS, led by the evil Siegfried (Terence Stamp). With so much comic grist to build on, it’s a shame that the writers chose to ignore the no-brainer elements that should have shoehorned the comedy as a recognizable poke of infectious laughter. In the end, the filmmakers fell down on their most obvious job. No one was willing to get smart. CV

‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan’

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Hopes are dashed for the screenwriting contribution of Judd Apatow to elevate Adam Sandler as a poor man’s Groucho Marx in this lamely executed comedy about an Israeli assassin turned hair stylist. Zohan (Sandler) fakes his own death during an assassination mission in order to escape to New York where he plans to become an instantly successful hair stylist for Paul Mitchell in spite of his lack of professional training. Zohan renames himself “Scrappy Coco” after his two canine traveling companions and is relegated to working as a hair-sweeper for Palestinian beauty Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui) at her neighborhood hair salon in an ethnically mixed area made up of Israelis and Palestinians. Zohan speeds up his apprenticeship by giving special backroom attention to the salon’s elderly female clientele. But Zohan’s secret past-life comes back to haunt him when his Palestinian rival, the Phantom (John Turturro) arrives in New York to open a chain of fast food restaurants. Inept jokes, incompetent sight gags and a lack of comic timing make this comedy boring and limp as a wet noodle.

All of the movies created by Sandler’s Happy Madison cottage industry production company rely on jokes that feel like you’re listening to a couple of guys sitting around trying to make each other cackle. What sounds funny to the writers never translates to the belly laughs they imagine their audience enjoying when the scenes play out on the big screen. Equipped with a package that would make a porn star blush, Zohan possesses superhero abilities that enable him to catch bullets in his nostril, single-handedly win at tug-of-war against a bull or cook fish while playing hacky sack — in the nude. But when left to his own devices, he’s most happy quelling the desires of older women in a semi-public atmosphere. In spite of the film’s turn-the-other-cheek message for Israeli/Palestinian peace, it might have worked better as a comedy if the screenwriting team had concentrated on its Israeli gigolo theme since that’s where the comedy gels the most.

Director Dennis Dugan (“Big Daddy” and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry”) is not likely to win awards for his linear vision. If you look at any great comic film — from “Harold and Maude” to “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” — you find prolonged scenes that intensify with humor as their pressurized context bubbles over. There is inevitability about them and a design in the writing that allows the characters to test one another in a way that pulls them, and us, in a surprising direction we are only too happy to go. Sandler’s movies rarely have any of these elements. Nothing connects. In “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan,” he plays hacky sack with a cat that belongs to the older woman who puts him up and with whom he sleeps. It’s a funny visual, but it exists in isolation.

In a movie that pretends to serve as an allegory for generating peace in the Middle East, there’s not much wit and no poetry to speak of. However successful Sandler has been in creating comedies that cater to audiences willing to give credit where little is due, he remains a definitive loser throwing darts in the dark at comic goals that don’t exist. For such an unclear grasp of the concept of comedy, Sandler and his crew should go back to school and watch some Marx Brothers movies for a few months. The education just might correct their recurring mistakes. CV

‘Kung Fu Panda’

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Jack Black inhabits the animated panda called Po with so much of his signature whimsy that audiences get a double dose of Black’s comic persona. Po is an adopted child to a family of Chinese cooks and is expected to carry on the family business, but Po dreams only of becoming a great kung fu master. At a high mountain temple, lives the great Master Oogway (Randall Duk Kim), who chooses Po to become the temple’s new Dragon Warrior over its highly skilled “Furious Five” monks (voiced by Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, David Cross and Seth Rogan). In order to protect the temple from the wrath of escaped prisoner and kung fu snow leopard Tai Lung (Ian McShane) Po must master the Secret of the Dragon Scroll with the help of a miniature wolf named Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). In spite of its strict adherence to limited formula constraints, “Kung Fu Panda” is an enjoyable kid’s movie full of zippy cartoon imagery and heartfelt vocal performances.

I once asked Black what he liked to do in his spare time, to which he amiably replied in his instantly recognizable way, “I likes to doodle.” It’s the kind of answer that wins you over for its irreverent sense of childish liberation. Black has made a career of refusing to grow up, and his infectious rebellion is enough to open the floodgates for audiences to follow their bliss. Coincidentally, it’s a similar message that “Kung Fu Panda” offers; even if some jaded adult audience members get the feeling that such ethics of personal realization are excessively redundant.

Po is a lazy, overweight panda with enough desire in his heart to get him up the Temple Mountain on the day when the next keeper of the great secret will be chosen. Like Neo in “The Matrix,” or Michael Angarano’s young character in “The Forbidden Kingdom,” Po is groomed as the next great defender. He will have to learn discipline, respect and a brand of confidence that can only come from facing his greatest fears, namely entering into combat with the deadly Tai Lung.

Objectively, there isn’t that much of a difference between “The Forbidden Kingdom” (starring Chan and Jet Li) and “Kung Fu Panda” except that the latter is better suited to younger children. The animation on display is top-notch, but it’s Black who steals the show. CV

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