Steve Carell’s Get Smart topped the weekend box office with a $39.2 million opening, well exceeding its hoped-for haul. Meanwhile, Mike Myers’ The Love Guru - which was derided by at least one critic as “one of the worst films of the year” - fell way, way (”Way!”) shy of projections, placing No. 4 with a mere $14 mil.

Rounding out the weekend’s top five were Kung Fu Panda ($21.7 mil), which I’m quite literally just about to watch with my sons at the Cape Cod Cinema; The Incredible Hulk ($21.6 mil, now just a few mil shy of the original Hulk’s overall take) and The Happening ($10 mil).

credit: tvguide

Get Smart (* * 1/2 out of four) is bright enough, but stops short of being clever.

This contemporary remake of the iconic ’60s TV comedy could have used more of the sly wit of show creators Buck Henry and Mel Brooks and less of the antic humor and overblown action sequences that typify Hollywood’s summer output.

While the film is breezily entertaining, it also is surprisingly generic, despite the likable Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart. Carell does a fine, goofy job. But you wish he could have tapped into his nuanced and darker comic side that is so hilariously revealed in TV’s The Office. Anne Hathaway is about as effective as Agent 99 as can be imagined, short of the original, Barbara Feldon. But the sentimental facets of her character dilute her sardonic and sassy nature. (more…)

Chicago Sun Times

By Roger Ebert

The closing credits of “Get Smart” mention Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, creators of the original TV series, as “consultants.” Their advice must have been: “If it works, don’t fix it.” There have been countless comic spoofs of the genre founded by James Bond, but “Get Smart” (both on TV and now in a movie) is one of the best. It’s funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we’d expect from a new Bond movie itself. And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting.

Steve Carell makes an infectious Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but ambitious and unreasonably self-confident agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency in rivalry with the CIA. His job is to decipher overheard conversations involving agents of KAOS, its Russian counterpart. At this he is excellent: What does it mean that KAOS agents discuss muffins? That they have a high level of anxiety, of course, because muffins are a comfort food. Brilliant, but he misses the significance of the bakery they’re also discussing - a cookery for high-level uranium. (more…)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The new spy spoof “Get Smart” took an early lead at the weekend box office in North America, while Mike Myers bombed with his latest comedy “The Love Guru,” according to first-day sales data issued on Saturday.

“Get Smart,” a remake of the ’60s television series of the same name, earned an estimated $13.35 million on Friday, said distributor Warner Bros. Pictures.

The Time Warner-owned studio said the film would end up with about $37 million — slightly ahead of forecasts — once ticket sales for Saturday and Sunday are factored in. Estimates for the three-day period will be issued on Sunday, followed by final data on Monday.

“The Love Guru,” meanwhile, opened at No. 4 with just $5.4 million, according to tracking firm Box Office Mojo, and will fall far short of the $20 million range that Hollywood pundits had picked for the weekend. Paramount Pictures, the film’s Viacom Inc-owned distributor, declined to comment. (more…)

The Crew of Get Smart had an interview with Movieweb and gave some tips on how to be a spy!

Steve Carell and company offer some intelligent insight into their latest action comedy

In 1965, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry joined forces to forge one of the greatest sitcoms of its time with Get Smart! The show revolved around Maxwell Smart, aka Control Agent 86, as he and his partner, the beautiful and dangerous Agent 99, worked to battle the evil forces of KAOS and save the world time after time. Now, more than thirty years later, director Peter Segel has resurrected the show in the form of a big screen outing, which stars Steve Carell as Max and Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. Rounding out the cast are Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, and the great Terrance Stamp.

This fine ensemble recently gathered in Los Angeles to recount their time spent on the set and to regale us with intellectual bon mots, all in a means to help us Get Smart. Here is that wonderful conversation:

Did you guys watch the original TV show before diving head first into this endeavor?

Steve Carell: I steered clear of it. I didn’t want to do an impression of Don Adams. I figured there was no way to improve upon what he had done. I thought the more I watched him, the more I would be inclined to do an impersonation. He was so good and so definitive in that role. I sort of backed away from it.

Alan Arkin: I made the choice thirty years ago not to watch the show. For me, it was easy. I had no problem making this character my own.

Anne Hathaway: I actually grew up watching the show on “Nick at Nite”. I used to love it, so it was really fun to revisit that. I was one of the last people cast, so I missed the whole collaboration of it. The: “This is the movie we’re making” part of it. I wanted to make sure that I understood what tone we were trying to achieve. I think we’ve managed to have that silly, sweet, yet sophisticated feel that the original series had.

Dwayne Johnson: I watched the show when I was a kid. I was a big fan of the show. I would have loved to have met Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. I was a big fan of the original, but I didn’t get a chance to meet those guys. When they first approached me with the idea, I thought, “Uh-oh, here we go. They’re messing with something that’s great.” You’ve got to be careful. But the material was great. All the elements came (more…)