To a young kid obsessed with everything 007-related, the late 60s spy spoof Get Smart – whose reruns once aired, conveniently, right before bedtime on Nick at Nite – was about the coolest thing on television at the time.

Sure, some of the gags were probably over my head, but all the goodhearted swipes at the Bond series were always appreciated, and even at that age I could recognize the late Don Adams’ innate and inimitable comedic genius – that man could pop off catchphrases with the best of them, and nobody’s ever gotten more comic mileage out of talking into a shoe.

With all that in mind, I have to say I’m a little wary of this week’s Hollywood remake of my beloved show. Yes, I think Steve Carell was the best possible choice to play Maxwell Smart, and he should be well matched by co-stars Anne Hathaway and Dwayne “Sorry, But I’m Still Going to Refer to You as ‘The Rock’” Johnson, but I enjoyed Bewitched and Scooby Doo on the small screen, too, and look what happened when they got made into big-budget summer movies. Get Smart had a madcap comedic energy that was all its own, and I can’t imagine that would be an easy thing to duplicate and/or update for modern moviegoers – though I’ll be the first one to sing the filmmakers’ praises if they actually get it right.

As big-screen spy spoofs go, however, fans of the old-school Get Smart series could do a lot worse than the 1984 comedy Top Secret!, featuring a pre-Iceman Val Kilmer in his first movie role. Written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker – the guys responsible for Airplane!, still probably the greatest spoof movie of all time – the cult favorite is wall-to-wall packed with clever visual gags, and makes today’s unfortunate glut of shoddily-constructed spoofs (which Abrahams and the Zuckers, sadly, are partially responsible for) seem even lamer than we already know they are.

Kilmer stars as an Elvis-like American rock-and-roll heartthrob named Nick Rivers who’s just hit the top of the charts with his hit song Skeet Surfin’ – a Beach Boys-esque tune about, well, surfing and shooting skeet (simultaneously, of course). In the film’s world, East Germany is run by some nefarious Nazis, who’ve invited Nick to perform at a concert that’s actually a smokescreen for a world-domination scheme involving the requisite kidnapped scientist, a magnet that attracts submarines, and a whole lot of cackling. Never mind the plot, however, since even the filmmakers admit that it’s just an excuse to string together gags that leaves no form of silliness unturned – from hilarious gibberish posing as German to an unexpected (and spot-on) parody of the 80s trash classic The Blue Lagoon to a ballet sequence that seemingly anticipates the arrival of Viagra more than a decade before it was invented. My personal favorite: a gag involving an industrial-size “marital aid,” the easy-to-miss punchline to which is the funniest line in the movie (it’s amazing what you could get away with in a PG-rated flick back then). A cameo by Pac-man ranks a close second.

Never as consistent or laugh-out-loud hilarious as Airplane!, Top Secret! is inventive and energetic throughout and showcases one of the most charismatic performances in Kilmer’s career – he even does all his own singing and dancing. The supporting cast is mostly game (and screen legend Omar Sharif has some very funny moments as an ill-fated secret agent) but the film’s appeal lies not so much in the performances but in the inspired goofiness of the sight gags and production design, both uncommonly good for a comedy of this type. You’ve just got to love a movie that includes the only underwater barroom brawl in film history, and in which East German stationery bears the slogan “Better Government Through Intimidation.”

Easily and pretty cheaply available on dvd, Top Secret! is exactly the kind of movie that Get Smart should be, and has rightly earned its status as a classic yukfest of the VHS era. They simply don’t make spoofs like this anymore, but they sure ought to.

I don’t get any pleasure out of saying so, but M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water is officially my least favorite movie of all time.

That’s not because it’s terrible – but, holy sweet crap is it terrible – but more because I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Shyamalan, who’d seemed to be so in touch with his audience on films like The Sixth Sense and Signs, could be responsible for something so woefully misguided, self-indulgent, and unappealing on every conceivable level.

As bad a taste as that film left in my mouth, though, I’m still pretty psyched for his new film, the unexpectedly R-rated apocalyptic thriller The Happening, and – although it might just be wishful thinking – I believe it might be one of his best films thus far. Why? Because everybody makes mistakes, and many of my favorite filmmakers have rebounded from their biggest critical and popular disasters with some of their most highly regarded work. Just as Steven Spielberg followed up his ill-conceived and unappreciated 1941 with his now-legendary Raiders of the Lost Ark in the early 80s – and then, in the early 90s, bounced back from the one-two punch of mediocrity that was Always and Hook with the instant-classic Jurassic Park – I’m hoping that the embarrassing performance of Lady knocked some sense back into M. Night, and that’s why I’m dedicating this week’s Movie Match to great films made by great directors in the wake of their biggest disappointments.

John McTiernan’s Die Hard With a Vengeance

The Last Action Hero, a hopelessly inept combination of kiddie fantasy-fulfillment flick and crude satire of violent action movies, was a total snafu of a film, even with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the lead and ace action director John McTiernan behind the camera. Although it very well could have derailed the director’s career, however, just two years later McTiernan delivered a crackling second sequel to his 1988 hit Die Hard, teaming Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson for an explosion-heavy romp around New York City that stands as one of the best summer blockbusters of the 90s. With its over-the-top but expertly choreographed action sequences – the tunnel chase, especially, is an absolute jaw-dropper – and the highly entertaining chemistry between its stars, Die Hard With a Vengeance quickly reestablished McTiernan as a force to be reckoned with in the shoot ‘em up genre… though he’s yet to recover from a more recent string of bombs that includes 2002’s dreadful Rollerball remake.

Tim Burton’s Big Fish

Some classics can’t be touched, as fanboy favorite Burton learned when he unsuccessfully tried “re-imagining” Planet of the Apes back in 2002. While cool-looking, his poorly received Apes flick just didn’t have much heart – though his follow-up, 2004’s Big Fish, had enough of that for a dozen movies. Maybe Burton’s most sensitive and sentimental film to date, Big Fish (adapted by scribe John August) is a modern fantasy about a charismatic young man named Edward Bloom (Ewan McGregor) whose life is one tall tale after another; it’s also a touching and keenly observed story about coming to understand – and appreciate – one’s family, as strange as they might be. Deftly mixing fairy tale elements and eye-popping storybook visuals with a streak of warmth and humanity that surpasses even his own masterpiece, Edward Scissorhands, Burton bounced back from his misfired monkey movie with a film that has quickly become one of my all-time favorites.

Kevin Smith’s Clerks 2

Smith’s filmography has its share of both obsessive fans and bile-spewing haters, and the latter camp was probably thrilled with his dopey 2003 dramedy Jersey Girl – the detractors couldn’t have asked for a better argument as to why Smith should quit filmmaking and head back to the convenience store where he got his start. And, actually, that’s exactly what Smith did with 2006’s Clerks 2, a 12-years-later sequel to the vulgar black-and-white comedy that gave him his big break. Returning to the Star Wars references and MPAA-baiting dialogue that had once earned him the adulation of myself and other teenage guys all over America – but, this time, with an added dose of thirtysomething cynicism and melancholy that really helped round out his cast of knockabout blue-collar characters – Smith played to his own strengths and gave the fans what they wanted, rather than taking another ill-advised detour into Lifetime-movie territory. The result was one of the funniest and best-written movies of his career.

Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center

I enjoyed Stone’s overblown historical epic Alexander more than most folks did, but the film remains an extremely high-profile megabomb – and a costly one, at that. In Alexander’s wake, though, came the most earnest and least self-indulgent movie the unpredictable director had ever made: 2006’s harrowing and fact-based 9/11 drama World Trade Center. Made – shockingly – without a political agenda, the well-directed and inspiring film wisely narrowed its scope to focus on one incredible story at the center of an unfathomable day of tragedy: that of Port Authority police officers John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno (played in the film by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena), who struggled to stay alive underneath a horrific mass of rubble after getting caught under a collapsed tower during a rescue mission. One might have expected Stone to treat this subject matter with a lot more vitriol – his upcoming release, after all, is an incendiary George W. Bush biopic – but instead he crafted a well-meaning and refreshingly non-exploitative tribute to American heroism that silenced even some of his harshest critics.

Spike Lee’s Inside Man

Lee’s never been a filmmaker short on ideas, but he crammed so many into the loopy 2004 satire She Hate Me that the film quite literally collapsed under the weight; Roger Ebert, whose mediocre review was one of the only remotely positive ones the film earned, says it “contains enough for five movies, but has no idea which of those movies it wants to be.” Apparently, Lee learned a little bit about focus before returning to the big screen; his next effort, 2006’s Inside Man, was a tight, smart, highly entertaining heist flick that – while not amongst his most meaningful films – managed to score with one of his widest audiences yet. Solid central performances by Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster, as well as some especially nice work from co-stars Chiwetel Ejiofor and Clive Owen, round out an ingeniously plotted crime drama that leaves two confused cops (Washington and Ejiofor) scrambling to figure out just what the hell happened during one of the most enigmatic bank robberies in movie history. Who knew that, after proving himself as one of the most notable “serious” American filmmakers of his generation, Lee could also fire off a near-perfect genre pic without breaking a sweat?

Well folks, the most eagerly anticipated movie of 2008 is finally upon us this week. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about the Adam Sandler cinematic classic-to-be You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

What, you’re not soiling yourself with excitement for Sandler’s turn as an Israeli Mossad agent who longs to be a hair stylist? Yeah, me either. It’s not any particular beef I’ve got with Sandler, but even with Judd Apatow listed as a co-writer and the great John Turturro showing up for yet another supporting role, Zohan looks to be one of this summer’s most misguided movies, vying for that dubious honor with Mike Myers’ The Love Guru.

Personally, I think Sandler’s big-screen comedic aptitude peaked with his first major movie, Billy Madison (yes, it’s an orgy of crude, juvenile slapstick hijinks, but hey, who doesn’t love an orgy?), and for years now I’ve been wishing he’d just scrap the juvenile stuff and do some more worthwhile film work – his 2002 collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love, is one of my favorite movies, and proved that Sandler has what it takes to transition to “serious” roles if he were willing to make the leap.

Until that day, though, I’ll leave you with four Sandler movies that ended up being a heck of a lot better than anybody could have predicted – in the hopes that Zohan might somehow manage to bring this list up to five.

Click

It’s a Wonderful Life it ain’t, but this potentially horrific (possibly unintentional) homage to Frank Capra actually ended up being one of the most bearable – and kinda-sorta lovable – Sandler comedies of the past decade. The plot, which wouldn’t have seemed out of place on The Twilight Zone, has workaholic architect Sandler purchasing an enchanted remote control from kooky scientist Christopher Walken that allows him to control time by simply clicking its buttons. As he uses it to fast-forward the “boring” parts of his daily existence – and occasionally ogle some jiggling cleavage in slo-mo – he begins to inadvertently skip over the important moments with his kids and his wife (Kate Beckinsale, clearly the kind of girl you want to pause, not fast-forward). Mostly sacrificing huge laughs in favor of sentimentality, Click is still markedly better than the average effects-driven big-budget comedy, thanks to its occasionally inventive script and a winning Sandler performance that has his character aging almost a half-century (aided by Oscar-nominated makeup effects) over the course of the film.

Reign Over Me



I’ve never cried during an Adam Sandler flick – thought I may have shed a tear or two after having wasted eight bucks seeing Mr. Deeds – but this 2007 film, from writer/director Mike Binder, came the closest to making that happen.
Sandler, in his riskiest role to date, plays an average family man who became a withdrawn eccentric after losing his wife and daughters in the 9/11 attacks; his old dental school roommate (Don Cheadle) bumps into him one day, and takes it upon himself to reconnect with his old friend and bring him out of the depressed, lonely stupor he’s been suffering through.
Binder has a knack for character-driven films with engaging little touches of comedy (a combination he nailed in his previous film, The Upside of Anger), and Reign Over Me gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of its Cheadle/Sandler pairing without crossing the line into exploitation – an impressive feat, considering the subject matter. Had the film been released in November instead of March last year, Sandler might have even landed an award nomination or two.

Airheads



Dated as this grunge-era comedy is becoming, it’s still got laughs to spare – and features the kind of once-in-a-lifetime cast that’ll make it worth seeing no matter how painful the hairstyles are.
Sandler plays the dimwitted drummer of headbanger Brendan Fraser’s terrible hard rock trio The Lone Rangers (which also includes a very scraggly Steve Buscemi), who resort to extreme measures to get their demo tape played on the radio: they break into the radio station with plastic Uzis and hold the staff and d-bag DJ Joe Mantegna hostage. Coming off like a lighthearted cross between Wayne’s World and Die Hard (it’s even shot in the same L.A. highrise they used for the Nakatomi Plaza), Airheads offered Sandler one of his first major movie roles and surrounded him with the funniest lineup of supporting players he’s had to date – including Chris Farley, Michael McKean, Judd Nelson, Harold Ramis, and, in a particularly entertaining turn, a pre-Seinfeld, pre-career suicide Michael Richards.

Spanglish

Though Sandler’s finest performance to date can still be found in Punch-Drunk Love, he’s no slouch in this overlong but endearing culture-clash dramedy, directed by small-screen legend James L. Brooks.
Sandler plays a successful celebrity chef whose high-strung wife (Tea Leoni) has been making life difficult for him and his two kids; into their affluent household comes Mexican-born, mostly Spanish-speaking maid Flor (Paz Vega) and her daughter (Shelbie Bruce), good-hearted immigrants who gradually begin to affect their employers’ unhappy lives in some unexpected ways.
Brooks’ film is a bit messy and chaotic – sort of like real life – and Leoni’s character can be tough to take, but Sandler shines in his scenes with Vega (making her American film debut), and Spanglish manages to find some moments of real resonance in its dysfunctional but thankfully not soap-operatic portrayal of upper-class misery.