Fridae

Thank God for comedian Steve Carrell! Hollywood's new Mr Nice Guy is a refreshing change from the fraternity of loudmouthed gasbags like Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Owen Wilson and Rob Schneider who trade on gross-out humour and pure rudeness.

Funny and talented as he is though, he still can't save Get Smart from being a fairly generic and ultimately forgettable comedy. He plays the dumb intelligence agent Maxwell Smart (made popular by the 1960s TV series) who has to stop the evil agency CHAOS from wrecking the world.

His field partner is the beautiful Agent 99, played by Anne Hathaway who seems to be everywhere these days. (Anne, incidentally, is touted by Entertainment Weekly as the next Julia Roberts � but we beg to differ.) Somewhere between the slips and pratfalls, the two succeed in saving the world...

Directed by Peter Segal, who's made okay comedies like 50 First Dates and Nutty Professor II, Get Smart sticks to the tried-and-true in getting people to laugh. But it lacks the zing and sparkle that made the TV series such a gem.

Indeed, if the movie's humour level had been lower, it might just have drawn accusations of being another bad remake, like 2006's The Pink Panther with Steve Martin. Remember that?