USA Today
"[T]he film is breezily entertaining....Carell does a fine, goofy job." 06/19/2008New York Times
"[W]ith funny jokes, brand actors and enough special effects to give you some bang for your summertime buck....The most crucial of those recognizable faces in the GET SMART movie belongs to the comic actor Steve Carell, putting an amusing deadpan spin on the blundering CONTROL spy Maxwell Smart..." 06/20/2008 Entertainment Weekly
"[D]irected by Peter Segal with a refreshing lack of look-how-meta-clever-we-are egotism, the movie references enough of the original touchstones to please those who lived it the first time." -- Grade: B 07/11/2008 p.52 Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "In many ways, Maxwell Smart is the role Carell was born to play. The 007 wannabe exudes the guileless quality of his 40 year-old virgin..." 09/01/2008 p.72 Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "Steve Carell re-invents the '60s TV show about an unconventional spy in this silly-but-fun movie....Perfectly likable..." 03/01/2009 ReelViews 8 of 10
Get Smart becomes the latest in a long line of TV series to get a big-screen treatment. While we have come to expect recycled refuse from most of these (Bewitched perhaps occupying the nadir), Get Smart manages to rise above the continuum of regurgitation by walking a tightrope that allows it to appeal to those who have fond memories of the late-1960s spy spoof and those who don't know Don Adams from John Adams. Get Smart is delightfully silly and at times very funny. The characters are likeable and feel connected to their TV counterparts. And, although Mel Brooks and Buck Henry (creators of the original) are not directly involved, the filmmakers have crafted something that both men would likely agree is in the spirit of what they shepherded to the small screen...If Get Smart faces a hurdle, it could be that viewers are tiring of these TV-to-movie transitions (perhaps because so many have been so bad), and Get Smart lacks the cachet of some of its contemporaries. It is not widely available on DVD (only as an entire series box set from Time Life) and thus has not re-entered the popular culture of the 2000s the way so many older TV shows have. This is one instance, however, when a TV series-based movie rewards nostalgia without demanding it. Get Smart is funny enough in its own right to attract younger viewers while paying homage to its 40-year old predecessor. - James Berardinelli
Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
The closing credits of "Get Smart" mention Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, creators of the original TV series, as "consultants." Their advice must have been: "If it works, don't fix it." There have been countless comic spoofs of the genre founded by James Bond, but "Get Smart" (both on TV and now in a movie) is one of the best. It's funny, exciting, preposterous, great to look at, and made with the same level of technical expertise we'd expect from a new Bond movie itself. And all of that is very nice, but nicer still is the perfect pitch of the casting...Steve Carell makes an infectious Maxwell Smart, the bumbling but ambitious and unreasonably self-confident agent for CONTROL, a secret U.S. agency in rivalry with the CIA. His job is to decipher overheard conversations involving agents of KAOS, its Russian counterpart. At this he is excellent: What does it mean that KAOS agents discuss muffins? That they have a high level of anxiety, of course, because muffins are a comfort food. Brilliant, but he misses the significance of the bakery they're also discussing -- a cookery for high-level uranium...One of the gifts of Steve Carell is to deliver punchlines in the middle of punches and allow both to seem real enough at least within the context of the movie. James Bond could do that, too. And in a summer with no new Bond picture, will I be considered a heretic by saying "Get Smart" will do just about as well? - Roger Ebert
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