It may surprise you that the TV-to-movie makeover Get Smart hinges on a desi wrestler with acromegaly, and Steve Carell gasping in phonetic Punjabi: ‘Main tuhanu janda’ (I know you). But it makes sense when you realize the director also did The Longest Yard. There too he cast Dalip ‘Giant’ Singh, who plays a KAOS henchman imaginatively named Dalip. The man dwarfs The Rock in stature, and his cranium cants in exaggerated degrees, but when he envelops Carell in a man-hug, you feel the tenderness of the pind. Besides, he’s defending the honor of a woman named Zeenat, someone we can all get behind. If only.

The movie lifts an air marshal scene from Harold and Kumar 2 and many others from better films like Entrapment and the Bourne series. At times it descends into a poor man’s 007. But though it doesn’t hang together, lurches from sketch to sketch and pushes incoherent politics, it’s full of funny moments leaning on Carell’s shlubbiness. As for Anne Hathaway contorting her bum through a room full of lasers, as did Catherine Zeta-Jones nine years ago — there was no air left in the room.

Here’s the trailer:

Agent 99 handles her snub-nosed PPK:

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