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Get Smart And Save Your Money

Steve Carell has come a long way since he was reporting fake news for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Sometimes Ayo! Scott wishes he’d go back where he came from. Not all the time, of course. Only when he follows up comedic masterpieces like Little Miss Sunshine and The Office with three successive family-friendly turds like Evan Almighty, Dan in Real Life, and Horton Hears A Who! Add to that list Get Smart, his remake of the 1960s Mel Brooks TV show about good spies battling bad ones. (Personally, Ayo! was hoping for a T.J. Hooker movie.)

In the new version, Carell plays the bumbling CONTROL spy Maxwell “Agent 86” Smart straighter than Don Adams did in the original, so you root for him to be the hero even while he’s roasting his nuts with a laser beam. It has the explosive action and sex appeal you’d expect from a summer blockbuster (though Anne Hathaway seems to desperately want to be a 45-year-old women, in movies and real life), but is sadly weighed down by obvious jokes that fall flat. The big tough assassin for KAOS is actually a softie with marital problems? Ayo!’s choking on the hilarity! President Bush is stupid? That gem will keep Ayo! chuckling as the spawn of Satan leads us all into the end of days!

On the bright side, for every deuce Carell drops, Jon Stewart has him back on the show as a guest for a few minutes of actual comedy. After the jump, watch the Get Smart trailer and Carell’s recent appearance on The Daily Show and decide which doesn’t suck.

GET SMART TRAILER:

STEVE CARELL ON THE DAILY SHOW: