Get Smart — Not as intelligent as the original.
When I was a child growing up in California, every morning, while eating a bowl or two of Cookie Crisp, my brothers and I had a great routine: first weíd watch The Price is Right, then a rerun of Get Smart.
Nowadays, most college age students donít know Agent Maxwell Smart or the fictional secret government agency Control. However, one thing they are familiar with is Steve Carell.
Get Smart is not a Get Smart movie. And while it does include many running Get Smart lines and gags, it is a Steve Carell movie. Audiences unfamiliar with the original television series will be entertained nonetheless. But those who adored the classic will find it lacking in comparison.
In Get Smart, Carell plays the intelligent, not-so-smooth Agent 86, Maxwell Smart. After Control headquarters are broken into, Smart and Agent 99 (played by the gorgeous Anne Hathaway) are sent undercover deep into the land of their nemesis organization, Kaos.
The plot of Get Smart doesnít make much sense. The story somehow takes you from Controlís break-in to Europe looking for a bad guy, then to Moscow looking for a nuke factory, then back to the states to foil a terrorist attack.
Carell fans, get ready to be purely entertained. Get Smart fans, think twice. Itís not what youíve been waiting for.
The Love Guru — Myers is back and unapologetic.
Five years after appearing on the big screen (not including voice work), Mike Myers is back and better than ever as Guru Pitka — an American orphan raised to become a world-famous guru. As an adult, Pitka is only the number two guru, next to his former classmate, real-life guru Deepak Chopra.
In order to out-do Chopra, Pitka decides he needs to get on the Oprah Winfrey show, and the only way to get on Oprah is to cure a train-wreck celebrity marriage.
The costars of The Love Guru add to the big brother charm that Myers possesses. The list includes Justin Timberlake, Jessica Alba, Ben Kingsley, Stephen Colbert, Romany Malco, Verne Troyer, Jim Gaffigan and many great cameos.
If you do not like Myers style of humor (a laAustin Powers and Wayne’s World), then youíll probably hate The Love Guru. The laughs in The Love Guru come from Myers usual tap of comedy — plays on words, acronyms, visual and verbal innuendo and, of course, midget jokes. The same types of jokes are used relentlessly so many times throughout the movie that you think youíd get tired of them, but because of how funny they really are, you don’t.
If you’re a Myers fan, then do not miss The Love Guru — easily one of the funniest movies of the year.
WALL’E — Like Short Circuit, only good
Leave it to writer/director/Vice President, Creative of Pixar Animation Studios Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, Monster Inc., Finding Nemo) to write and direct the best Disney/Pixar movie in years.
WALL’E begins on an abandoned planet Earth. We quickly learn that hundreds of years ago, humans trashed Earth beyond short-term repair and left it to be cleaned by lots of small WALL’E robots — all but one of which are completely broken down.
The one that is still functioning and working is the loneliest of robots, spending nights with his only friend (a cockroach) watching classic musicals like Hello Dolly.
When a foreign, self-automated ship lands, deploying an iPod-like futuristic robot, WALL’E’s loneliness is cured. There’s nothing he won’t do for her, including following her into the depths of space.
The first half-hour of WALL’E, in essence, is a silent film. Stanton and crew did a marvelous task of giving visible human emotion to a faceless CG robot.
Though the plot sounds like itiacute’s jumping onto the green bandwagon, Stanton tells The UVU Review that it was not his motive.
“Going green was not the point of the picture — it was part of the genre we picked. It’s about irrational love defeating life’s programming,” Stanton said of the film, which was written in the 90s. “I’m all about this green thing. And I wish I had a crystal ball so I could go back in time to push it back then. I’d be a billionaire.”
WALL’E is not only family-friendly, but fun for everyone. It’s a beautiful blend of kid’s movies, silent film and art — and it even has a warm little moral.
Wanted — The Matrix on dirty, dirty crack.
Young heartthrob James McAvoy stars in this Matrix-esque action flick about a guy who learns to harness the hidden powers in his body and become one of the universes’ chosen assassins.
His whole life, Wesley Gibson (McAvoy) hasn’t fit in quite right with society. He’s never found his place, his niche. His father walked out on both him and his mom when he was a week old. He works a brutal office job under a beast of a boss. His girlfriend is cheating on him with his best friend, a coworker. And he’s got an awful case of anxiety that can only be cured with prescription drugs.
It isn’t until he’s confronted by a drop-dead gorgeous assassin (Angelina Jolie) that he learns more about himself than he’s ever known before. As it turns out, Gibson’s anxiety is more than just anxiety — it’s a gateway to a universal power that he must teach himself to harness, turning him into a nearly uncatchable super assassin.
Wanted is the fairly brutal R-rated action flick you’re surprised to see listed as a summer blockbuster. The dialogue is coarse and offensive and the action is ultraviolent.
For action fans and comic book geeks, Wanted is the perfect blend of good story and blissful violence that you dream of.
