Steve Carell will Get Smart?

Reader Comments

1. Ryan 04/01/2005 @ 8:28am

   Granted if this is true..

   I wish that Hollywood would give options before they buttraped my childhood. Like if I were presented with this situation:

   Would you:
   A) Like us to kill your parents
   B) Continue raping all of your favorite parts of your childhood?

   I mean come on; first Bewitched and now Get Smart. Someone shoot me.. or them.

2. Michael 04/01/2005 @ 9:07am

   it was a preposterous idea: hey let’s take the bbc hit tv show ‘the office’ and make an american version of it with a pilot episode that is for all intensive purposes a remake of the original except with different actors in the starring roles. before i begin this rant i should attest to my complete and utter love for the original bbc program. without a doubt it is not only the funniest, smartest television series i have ever seen but quite possibly the single greatest document of comedy ever made. i have watched the two and a half seasons repeatedly and without fail they incite hysterics. there is a particular magic that perhaps has something to do with its premise, applying the mockumentary genre on the mundane happenings of office work, but that carries over into the performances. although ricky gervais’ depiction of the boss from hell (in the guise of david brent) is a stand alone phenomenon of hilarity, the show is able to top this achievement by having a universally talented cast of actors who bring life into the roles of the supporting characters, and which, in the final christmas special, even evoke genuine emotion from its audience.

   in the past i have argued with friends about the importance of casting in film, and how miscasting has an overwhelming power over my enjoyment of a particular film as a whole. this is to say, all the other contributors involved in the film may be masters at what they do but if the right person is not cast at the center of the film it will more often than not end in my disconnection from the emotional center of the story. there are exceptions, particularly where there are self-conscious uses of miscasting to evoke a certain emotional response, which i think mike nichol’s may have done in casting jude law and julia roberts in ‘closer’ in order to exaggerate the superficiality of their characters by drawing close attention to their celebrity mystique. my primary example to prove the importance of casting is audrey tautou in ‘amelie’ (who by the way was the director’s second choice, after emily watson turned the role down). my emotional involvement in ‘amelie’ was largely the result of the physiognomy of tautou, of her saucer eyeballs and all-too-french upper lip curl, and all the quiet essence of being that she as a human being possessed prior to her performance, as a raw element of mis-en-scene. i had imagined that if emily watson was cast in the film, and the film was made virtually the same except for this change in casting i would have had a completely different reaction. but this is merely conjecture and so my opinions on this matter lacked real experimental evidence.

   until tonight, when i witnessed an almost blow-for-blow re-enactment of the ‘the office’ with american actors, and now i have the experimental evidence i was looking for. i had a premonition the show was going to be bad, but i could not believe just how bad. some of the jokes were told verbatim including vain attempts to capture the original actors’ mannerisms of delivery, and where once there was laughter and gaiety there was now the empty hum of office machinery. some quintessential ether was missing that had existed within the sterile office spaces of the original which the british actors apparently generated themselves. it was not merely a clever script, since this same script has been transferred into this american version and the original experience is gone. and this is no more obvious than in the hackery of imitation at the center of the new ‘brent-boss’, who breaks out into gervais-like titters and voices that seems so foreign from what the actor gives off in his general aura that it is uncomfortable to watch. it is like watching someone do a bad jack nicholson impersonation. equally atrocious is the replacement for ‘tim canterbury’: instead of the slacker idol of the original who genuinely conveyed a sense of defeat, the american ‘tim’ looks like a jock with tim-like hair (much the same way ‘losers’ are portrayed in the cosmetically perfect universes of ‘o.c.’ and the like). the american gareth is actually the only one who could possibly pull off a partial transfer of the character’s original charisma, but it is such a faint flicker it is hardly likely. there is zero charisma between dawn and tim, and this is one of the key ingredients for the success of the original.

   all in all it was a car wreck of epic proportions.

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