‘Get Smart’ doesn’t get smart

In theaters

GET SMART directed by Peter Segal, written by Tom Astle and Matt Ember, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

Clocking in at nearly two hours – and feeling every minute of it – is the weary new Peter Segal movie, “Get Smart,” which stars Anne Hathaway’s hair, her clothes and her transfixing eyes; Steve Carell’s clipped delivery and deadpan shtick; and Dwayne Johnson’s swagger, which he has been honing for years.

You were expecting something more? Perhaps a comedy filled with consistent laughs? A movie whose script rose to the talent of its leads? A film that didn’t feel as if it rumbled down some creaky assembly line with people hammering away at it until it arrived in theaters dented and dinged?

Same here, but good luck finding it.

Though there are fleeting moments of humor in this otherwise bland re-envisioning of the 1960s television spy spoof that starred Don Adams and Barbara Feldon, there aren’t enough of those moments to allow the film to live up to its title. And while you sense that the likable Carell and Hathaway could be just fine together in a movie that was indeed funny, that isn’t the case here. Each is wasted.

From Tom Astle and Matt Ember’s script, the film finds Carell’s Maxwell Smart finally getting promoted from analyst to agent by Chief (Alan Arkin) when their agency, CONTROL, comes under fire by KAOS, an evil organization run by the sneering Siegfried (Terence Stamp), who has plans to blow up Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb. It’s up to Max and his new partner, Agent 99 (Hathaway), to stop Siegfried and his posse from doing so. That mission leads them to Moscow because, you know, that’s where the Cold War was when the original series aired.

Since the movie is set in the present, the Moscow angle makes little sense, but the trip abroad at least allows the movie to show off the city, which looks beautiful at night, as well as to entertain two of its better moments. The first involves Max dancing with a rather Rubenesque woman, who is aggressively light on her toes, and the other scene involves he and 99 maneuvering through laser beams in an effort to further their mission.

Otherwise, “Get Smart” routinely lays its talent flat with scattershot writing and lax direction. Those who know the original series – which was written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, no less – will wonder what happened to it on its way to the cineplex. Obviously, it got kicked to the curb, because the movie would prefer to deliver a wealth of rote action scenes than the screwball comedy it should have offered.

And that just isn’t smart. In fact, it was a mistake.

Grade: C-

On DVD and Blu-ray disc

10,000 B.C. directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich and Harald Kloser, 109 minutes, rated PG-13.

Sometimes, there’s just nothing good that can be said about a movie, so the best recourse is to just bury the mother and move on.

Such is the case with Roland Emmerich’s “10,000 B.C.,” which is hamburger onscreen – and not the lean variety. This movie is about 90 percent cinematic fat. The other 10 percent? Gristle. Maybe a bit of bone.

The film doesn’t know where it is, let alone what year it is. Since it’s either too lazy to look back into history and do its homework, or too cynical about its audience to believe that they haven’t done theirs, it just charges forward with zero knowledge of the time it’s trying to evoke.

With irritating casualness, the filmmakers set their movie during a specific time and then ignore the realties of that time. The cluttered plot goes like this: Steven Strait is the dreadlocked D’Leh, a member of the Yagahl tribe who hunts woolly mammoths for food and who possesses a powerful love hunger for Evolet (Camilla Belle).

Strife strikes when Evolet and others are stolen away by a competing tribe. When the Yagahl’s psychic Old Mother (Mona Hammond) falls into one of her creepy hypnotic trances and sees D’Leh’s future laid out in front of her, she instructs him to go after Evolet. This generates all sorts of trouble, not the least of which involves D’Leh coming to throws with some hilarious-looking giant birds, the lot of which are about as real as Rod Hull’s aggressive puppet, Emu, from the 1960s.

Also against D’Leh and his stoic sidekick Tic’Tic (Cliff Curtis) are, well, any number of things – a saber-toothed tiger, which looks as if it sprang out of a weak PS3 game; the most truncated journey ever across barren deserts and mountain ranges; and naturally, since the movie is, after all, set in 10,000 B.C., a lost city filled with pyramids, which the Egyptians apparently built 7,000 years earlier than we thought. Who knew?

Not Emmerich, or maybe he did know and doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. At least his characters aren’t fighting tooth decay – they all have amazingly white, perfect teeth. And at least many of the men were able to find a Bic in the B.C. – several are shaved, including their chests. But enough. As with any movie that stretches history to suit its needs, “10,000 B.C.” could have been forgiven every one of its missteps and shortcomings had it been a blast, which it isn’t.

This is a movie you actually forget while watching it.

Grade: D-

WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, video podcasts, iTunes portal and archive of hundreds of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.