Get Smart, Again! is a made-for-TV movie based on the 1965-1970
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
/
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is an American television network, one of television's original "big three", which also include NBC and ABC. Like NBC, CBS started out as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System...
television series,
Get SmartGet Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
!, which originally aired February 26, 1989 on
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
(the network that rejected the original pilot for the
Get SmartGet Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
! TV series). It has subsequently been released twice on
DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
by different publishers. In the video release of the movie, the background canned laughter (pre-recorded laughter added later to the soundtrack) is absent.
The film is not as well known as the earlier theatrical release,
The Nude BombThe Nude Bomb is a comedy film based on the television series Get Smart. It starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and was directed by Clive Donner...
, also based on
Get SmartGet Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
, but was better received by fans of the original program.
Get Smart, Again! is a made-for-TV movie based on the 1965-1970
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices in Burbank,California...
/
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is an American television network, one of television's original "big three", which also include NBC and ABC. Like NBC, CBS started out as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System...
television series,
Get SmartGet Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
!, which originally aired February 26, 1989 on
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. It first broadcast on television in 1948...
(the network that rejected the original pilot for the
Get SmartGet Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
! TV series). It has subsequently been released twice on
DVDDVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc,is an optical disc storage media format, and was founded in 1995. Its main uses are video and data storage...
by different publishers. In the video release of the movie, the background canned laughter (pre-recorded laughter added later to the soundtrack) is absent.
Differences between Get Smart, Again! and The Nude Bomb
The film is not as well known as the earlier theatrical release,
The Nude BombThe Nude Bomb is a comedy film based on the television series Get Smart. It starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and was directed by Clive Donner...
, also based on
Get SmartGet Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
, but was better received by fans of the original program. Unlike
The Nude Bomb, which featured only the characters of Smart, The Chief (with
Dana ElcarDana Elcar was an American television and movie character actor. Although he appeared in about 40 films, his most memorable role was on the 1980s and 1990s television series MacGyver as Peter Thornton, an administrator working for the Phoenix Foundation...
replacing the deceased
Edward PlattEdward Cuthbert Platt was an American character actor best known for his portrayal of "The Chief" in the 1965-70 NBC/CBS television series Get Smart. With his deep voice and mature countenance, he played an eclectic mix of characters over the span of his career.-Early life:Platt was born on St...
), Agent 13 (
Dave KetchumDave Ketchum may refer to:*Dave 'Thumper' Ketchum, drummer for Coney Hatch*Dave Ketchum , actor on Get Smart...
in the series, portrayed by
Joey FormanJoey Forman was an American comedian and comic actor. He first attracted attention in Las Vegas as the opening act for Mickey Rooney...
in
The Nude Bomb, who had played the character Harry Hoo in the series) and Larrabee,
Get Smart, Again! featured all of the surviving original cast reprising their roles. The tone and feel of
Get Smart, Again! were also closer to that of the original series.
Get Smart, Again! was written and produced by
Leonard SternLeonard Stern, born December 23 1923 in New York, NY, is one of the creators, with Roger Price, of the word game Mad Libs.Stern is a successful television writer who wrote for such now classic series such as Get Smart, The Honeymooners, the Phil Silvers Show, The Steve Allen Show and Steve...
, who was a producer of the original series. One element of the
Nude Bomb ignored completely was the renaming of CONTROL as PITS in the earlier film; although as CONTROL is said to have disbanded in the 1970s, it's not impossible for both CONTROL and PITS to exist within the continuity of the franchise.
Barbara FeldonBarbara Feldon is an American former model and a prolific character actress of stage who is primarily known for her roles on television. Her most prominent role was that of Agent 99 on the popular 1960s sitcom, Get Smart.-Early life:Feldon was born in Pittsburgh's suburb of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania...
's character, 99, makes a reference to T.H.R.U.S.H., the evil organization in
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.The Man from U.N.C.L.E. is an American television series that was broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1964, to January 15, 1968. It follows the exploits of two secret agents, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, who work for a fictitious secret international law-enforcement agency called...
, a show on which Feldon guest-starred.
Theme music
Get Smart, Again! also reprises the TV program's original theme music and opening credit sequence, which were absent from
The Nude BombThe Nude Bomb is a comedy film based on the television series Get Smart. It starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, and was directed by Clive Donner...
. In this case, however, the corridors were covered in cobwebs and the phone-booth elevator that led to CONTROL headquarters worked in reverse, causing Smart to be thrown to the top of the booth.
Synopsis
Maxwell Smart (
Don AdamsDon Adams was an American actor, comedian, game show panelist and occasional director, who in his five decades of television was best known for his role as Maxwell Smart in the TV situation comedy Get Smart , for which he also directed and wrote...
), acting as a protocol officer since
CONTROLControl is used in a variety of contexts to express "mastery" or "proficiency": e.g. "Music students attending a master class are expected to have full control of basic skills such as rhythm and pitch" and more generally an ability to purposefully direct change.Control may also refer to:-Film:* A...
was disbanded in the early 1970s, is reactivated as a counterintelligence agent by Commander Drury (
Kenneth MarsKenneth Mars is an American television, movie and voice actor. Best known for his roles in several Mel Brooks films, the most memorable being the insane Nazi playwright of Springtime for Hitler, Franz Liebkind, in 1968's The Producers and the relentless Police Inspector Hans Wilhelm Fredrich Kemp...
) of the United States Intelligence Agency. KAOS, long considered defunct, has been revitalized by a corporate takeover. Its first scheme involves turning a forgotten American scientist and using his weather control machine to extort
$The United States dollar is the unit of currency of the United States. The U.S. dollar is normally abbreviated as the dollar sign, $, or as USD or US$ to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies and from others that use the $ symbol. It is divided into 100 cents .The U.S...
250 billion US dollars from the United States Government. Drury, convinced that only Smart has the expertise to combat KAOS, gives him carte blanche to reactivate former CONTROL agents to assist him in his task. Along with Drury's bumbling aide, Beamish (
Steve LevittSteve Levitt is an American actor who has appeared in films and on television. He is best known for his role in the 1987 movie Hunk as Bradley Brinkman and a recurring role in the Showtime TV series The Paper Chase....
), Smart recruits Larrabee (who, believing that he was under orders from
Richard NixonRichard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States and is the only president to resign the office. He was also the 36th Vice President of the United States ....
to stay at his post until relieved, has been living in his office in the now-abandoned CONTROL headquarters tending his office plants), Agent 13, Hymie the Robot (now employed as a
crash test dummyCrash test dummies are full-scale anthropomorphic test devices that simulate the dimensions, weight proportions and articulation of the human body, and are usually instrumented to record data about the dynamic behavior of the ATD in simulated vehicle impacts...
) and ultimately, his wife 99 (
Barbara FeldonBarbara Feldon is an American former model and a prolific character actress of stage who is primarily known for her roles on television. Her most prominent role was that of Agent 99 on the popular 1960s sitcom, Get Smart.-Early life:Feldon was born in Pittsburgh's suburb of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania...
) to find the security leak that allowed the scientist to defect, locate the weather machine and disarm it. They are opposed by a KAOS mole (
John de LancieJohn de Lancie is an American actor. He is known for his recurring role as Q on the various Star Trek series, and as Frank Simmons in Stargate SG-1.-Personal life:...
) within the USIA, who is able to predict Max's every move with the aid of stolen copies of 99's unpublished memoirs. The visible head of the KAOS scheme is revealed to be Max's old nemesis, Siegfried, but he is merely the agent of a higher executive whom even he has never met. This new leader is finally revealed as Nicholas Demente (
Harold GouldHarold V. Goldstein , best known by his stage name Harold Gould, is an American actor best known for playing Martin Morgenstern in the 1970s sitcoms Rhoda and The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as Miles Webber on The Golden Girls...
), 99's publisher, who intends not only to extort the money but also to create weather that will keep people eternally indoors and interfere with television reception, forcing millions of Americans to entertain themselves by buying Demente's books and publications. Max, 99, and Beamish infiltrate KAOS with the aide of Siegfried's twin brother Doctor Helmut Schmelding. After defeating Demente's henchmen with medieval weaponry, the CONTROL agents kill Demente with his own weather machine. Max and 99 celebrate by causing it to snow.
Comedic style
The script is littered with typical Maxwell Smart verbal gags, and large portions of the plot serve only as set ups for
Get Smart!Get Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
-style sight gags (such as a duel between Max and a KAOS hitman using remote controlled file cabinet drawers). The film also features the array of bizarre gadgetry and political satire that were hallmarks of the original series. The Cone of Silence has been replaced by "Hover Cover" where a meeting is held on a rooftop with three helicopters hovering overhead. The failure of Hover Cover leads to the development of "The Hall Of Hush", a soundproofed room where words print out silently in mid air, a success at first until the words begin to print forward, backward and on top of each other. The Cone of Silence now hangs over Max and 99's bed.
Max changes the well known quote "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?", to "Dr. Hottentot, I presume?".
1995 revival
The relative success of the film prompted the development of a short-lived
1995The year 1995 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1995.For the American TV schedule, see: 1995-96 United States network television schedule.-Events:...
weekly series on
FOXThe Fox Broadcasting Company , commonly referred to as Fox , is an American television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, from 2004 to 2009 Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the 18–49 demographic...
, also titled
Get SmartGet Smart was a short-lived weekly series that aired in 1995 on FOX. The series was a sequel to the original Get Smart television series that ran from 1965 to 1970.-A historical feat for the Get Smart franchise:...
, with Don Adams and Barbara Feldon reprising their characters as their bumbling son, Zach (
Andy DickAndrew R. "Andy" Dick is an American comedian, actor, musician and TV/film producer.-Early life:Dick was born in Charleston, South Carolina and was adopted at birth by Sue and Allen Dick, a naval officer. As a child, he lived in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York, and Yugoslavia...
), becomes CONTROL's star agent.
The show also starred Elaine Hendrix as Zach's sexy partner, Agent 66, and Heather Morgan as Max's secretary, Trudy, who is convinced she works for a talent agent.
See also
- The TV Series Get Smart
Get Smart is an American television comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre. Created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the show starred Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, Barbara Feldon as Agent 99, and Edward Platt as Thaddeus, the chief of CONTROL, a secret American government...
- Get Smart 2008 movie
External links