Get real

Get Smart? This movie doesn't even get dumb. Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway reprise the roles of Agent 86 and Agent 99, parts played on the 60s television show by Don Addams and Barbara Feldon. Honestly, Evan Almighty and Devil Wears Prada are easier to sit through than Get Smart.
Do we really have to go back to The Fugitive for a film based on a classic TV series that works? At least Get Smart should've done what Mission: Impossible does, reinvent the concept for the present day. The original show was a satirical take on cold war politics of the day, and it wasn't even that great. Get Smart was a mainstay of the NBC Saturday night comedy block although in its final year it moved to CBS and 86 and 99 got married. The only reason I thought it was the shit was because I was nine years old at the time.
But Get Smart isn't the only airball in current release. Last week I groaned through The Promotion, a smaller almost indie film starring a quartet of known actors (Seann William Scott, John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer and Lily Taylor) who are uniformly lost in an unfunny film. The Promotion tries to be a dramedy only The Promotion isn't quite wacky Employee of the Month bad enough, and it's not serious enough to even be Smart People lame. The Promotion does totally waste the talent of Taylor who appears speaking with a believable Scottish accent, and it recycles a gag involving thin apartment walls from Office Space.
Perhaps the biggest head scratcher in all of this is why Southland Tales, which I finally caught up with on DVD, was barely released and Get Smart and The Promotion get prime summer space. Maybe Southland Tales fails to live up to the promise of helmer Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko but at least Dwayne Johnson and Seann William Scott are in a film where you actually think they have talent. Scott painfully squeezes by in The Promotion as a milquetoast assistant store manager and Johnson plays Agent 23 in Get Smart.

John Adams

On three DVDs the miniseries John Adams will complete any exhaustive need to ruminate on American history. The impressive portrayals by all involved - Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, Stephen Dillane, Tom Wilkinson among others - gives the whole affair a vital momentum that lasts over its 7 hours. That the biopic eclipses typical network movies or Discovery Channel specials is a given, however even based on a Pulitzer Prize winning book the filmmakers change dates and use composite characters. My personal gripe concerns some obvious make-up gaffes. Visible grease pencil lines in a high school play would be okay, but in an expensive and expansive biopic, not so much. But that's a small thing really if not indicative of the enormity of the project: the series was shot over six months and in two countries (Hungary studios doubling for Dutch, British and French locations).
The series is based on David McCullogh's 2001 biography, John Adams and makes drama out of the minutia of colonial life. Special attention is drawn by the cinematography with its modern take on historicity. The shots are replete with handheld action, dutch tilts and occasional special effects (buildings and landscapes). This gives John Adams a reality show tone, but its quiet insistence on the underside of the American revolution counters the series from overusing the style.
Massacres of civilians, court banter, secret meetings of landowners, revolution, diplomacy, cancer, politics all intertwine throughout the drama. The story will advance any number of years between episodes and that pace feels natural because the real arc are the relations over nearly a half century between John and Abigail Adams (Giamatti and Linney, who also played opposite each other in The Nanny Diaries) and Thomas Jefferson (Dillane).
Perhaps not totally coincidentally, I attended a Ben Franklin exhibit two years ago (at the Houston Museum of Natural History) and one of the interactive displays had an actor reading from Franklin's diary. The bit was about how Franklin and Adams were spending the night together and sharing a bed. One wants the window open, the other doesn't. In episode three we witness Adams being swept aside by Franklin's predetermined negotiations. Giamatti really captures the smug expression leaving Adam's face as he's politely insulted by French high society. Campaigning for aid for the American Revolution from the Dutch comes back to haunt him in a future ep. While Adams secures the foreign coin after the American victory in 1781, because he was abroad during much of the lengthy war this fact is used as ammunition by political enemies (firing blanks?) during his one and only term as president.
Depictions of life are so realistic to the point that an operation to remove a tumor using 18th century technology makes for a most wrenching scene. There's always a sense of whatever room or structure the characters are in, a kind of wooden environment. The series consistently echos the hardships and joys of the simpler life. After all, both Jefferson and Adams died (most of the other founders were long gone) on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the declaration of freedom from Britain. Only in that era communication was pretty much limited to how fast you rode a horse.
It's worth noting that the Adams family was adamantly against slavery and that he alone of the early presidents was the only non-slave owner. Cool extras include a feature that allows you to watch each episode with a bubble pop-up that delineates background info and history. Another feature documents McCullough on the process of writing. At one point he gives the viewers a tour of a Philly landmark, walking a narrow staircase to emerge on the roof. You can well imagine you are seeing somewhat the view Adams gazed at back in the day.