Editor’s Note
Don’t save us, we’ll save you
Have you noticed there are no movies about bumbling doctors? There are no bumbling teacher pics, nor films about bumbling lawyers. And when was the last time Hollywood made a movie about a bumbling journalist?
No, the bumbling genre seems to be reserved for one specific profession — law enforcement, whether the enforcer is a cop (The Naked Gun’s Lt. Drebin), an inspector (The Pink Panther’s Clouseau) or a spy (Austin Powers, Johnny English). This month, yet another bumbling spy, Maxwell Smart, makes his big-screen debut in Get Smart, a cinematic update of the 1960s TV show.
So why do we pick on the fine folk who devote their lives to protecting the public and — if movies are to be believed — saving the world from total annihilation on a surprisingly regular basis?
Well, that’s just it.
Sure, we love our Bond flicks, and we will always cheer for John McClane, but Movieland likes to make their cops and spies invincible. And no one likes a know it all. The bigger the hero, the more we want to reach out and poke a hole in his Kevlar underbelly. The bigger the hole, the more endearing the agent.
Which is why Get Smart, the spy-agency satire created by Buck Henry and Mel Brooks in 1965, had such a devoted following. Would you believe that, to this day, there are websites full of fan fiction that continue the awkward and ill-advised missions of secret agent Maxwell Smart and his long-suffering partner, Agent 99? How the authors of that fan fiction will react to the new movie remains to be seen. But the casting of the two leads — Steve Carell in the late Don Adams’ part and Anne Hathaway as brainy brunette, 99, first played by Barbara Feldon — seemed to go over well.
In our interview with Hathaway, “In Control,” she admits there’s no way to please all of the Get Smart fans. But if the amount of time she spent laughing on set is indicative of the amount of laughs in the film, most people should be satisfied.
Early reviews for Mike Myers’ The Love Guru are all about the number of laughs. Myers plays an opportunistic spiritual leader in what, by all accounts, is a silly, perhaps even offensive, juvenile comedy — but those who’ve seen the film also say they laughed and laughed and laughed. In “Karma Chameleon” Myers explains how he took his character, Guru Pitka, from concept to the stage and finally to screen.
Quite honestly, Tim Roth doesn’t seem like a natural choice to play The Incredible Hulk’s villain, the Abomination. But then again, who could have predicted his co-star Edward Norton would be cast as the big green guy? This is obviously not a cookie-cutter comic book movie. In “Tim Roth is Such a Monster” the indie-minded Brit tells you why he took on this unlikely role.
And in “The King of Teen Comedy” Canadian It Boy Seth Rogen recalls his start in showbiz — doing stand-up at a lesbian bar in Vancouver…at the age of 13.
Marni Weisz, editor