Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Kricfalusi Riffs on "Get Smart"

Many thanks to guest blogger Elizabeth Kricfalusi for this post. Be sure to visit her sites, www.ElizabethKricfalusi.com and www.EmbraceAdventure.com. And I SO identify with her thoughts on Get Smart (although I really do like Anne Hathaway as Agent 99). Read on for Elizabeth’s thoughts on Get Smart:

Da da daaaaaaa da!

I am SO psyched about seeing Get Smart. Usually, I have no interest in movies based on TV shows, no matter how much I loved the latter. For example, I never even entertained the idea of seeing Bewitched, even though I spent a good part of my childhood desperately wishing I was Samantha Stevens.

But from the moment I heard that Steve Carell would be playing Max, I knew I was going to have to see this movie. I don’t remember the last time I heard of such inspired casting. (I wish I could say I felt the same way about Anne Hathaway as Agent 99, but I guess you can’t have everything…). I can totally hear him saying all of those great catch phrases that still make me smile whenever I hear them: “Would you believe…?” “Sorry about that, Chief.” “Missed it by THAT much.”

More after the jump…

It’s funny, because I was never a big fan of serious spy movies—James Bond did nothing for me. But there were so many great bits in Get Smart that I can still picture them so clearly, and I probably haven’t seen an episode in at least 20 years. Some of my faves:

• The Cone of Silence (I can’t wait to see the new millenium version of THAT!
• Siegfried exclaiming, “Shtarker! Zis is KAOS. Vee don’t pfft pfft pfft here.”
• Agent 13, who kept showing up inside grandfather clocks, wall safes, and anywhere else you would never expect to find a human being.

And who can forget that chilling two-parter (possibly even a season finale?) that ended with a giant, hairy tarantula crawling up Max’s arm, his eyes growing wider as we faded to black… I suspect a lot of parents were cursing that episode when their kids woke up in the middle of the night screaming from their arachno-fueled nightmares.

I know I’m setting myself up for a major disappointment here. One of the reasons I think I loved Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Sex and the City so much was because my expectations for them weren’t all that high to begin with. But I’m really excited about Get Smart. So far the trailers look promising, but I’m well aware that I’m facing a real let-down danger here.

AND… loving it!

Images: Get Smart, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2008