Hmm. When was the last time I… Holy crap! I haven’t seen a movie at the LaGrange since late June!

I need to stoke the schmuck fires! What were my choices?

Swing Vote – This is the one where Kevin Costner is a porn star with an enormous penis, right?
Step Brothers – If its “funny” trailer fills me with sadness, I can’t imagine what an entire movie’s worth of this hijinx would do to me.
The Mummy: Tomb of Dragon Emperor – Nah, I am not feeling it.

Get Smart — Okay!

As I was making my way to the theater, I realized I was a little tired. That’s not a good state to be in to see a cheap movie. One must be fully alert, ready to navigate the shitty narratives of a second-run cinema.

I was welcomed back to the LaGrange into the largest and curviest of theaters, number one. As I sat there in the dim houselights, squinting at the latest Chicago Reader, I realized I was the only one there. A few minutes later I turned my head to see an employee close the theater door. For some unknown reason, I flashed them an “okay” sign.

I got a few trailers as a treat before the movie. One was for the Rainn Wilson vehicle The Rocker, which looked improbably horrible, and loaded with cheap physical gags that are supposed to be funny but never are. Look, he slipped! Look, he slipped again!

I also got the trailer for the newish X-Files movie, which if the trailer is any indication, consists solely of comedian Billy Connolly talking in an agitated, high-pitched voice and compulsively pawing at a snowy, frozen-over lake. GOOD TIMES!

Anyways, as I’m watching the trailers, a few more people straggle in, disrupting my private moviewatching experience. It’s not like I was picking my toes or was stripped down to my underwear, but I *had* gotten a little comfortable. Two girls sat down in the same row as me, just across the aisle.

Get Smart begins, and the girls immediately start chuckling. Now I realize I am really tired, and probably more susceptible to being annoyed by small things. Still, if there’s the barest hint of a joke, the girls start laughing. While these girls might be wonderful to have in a test market audience, it only took a few more “jokes” and “gags” for your friendly asshole curmudgeon to stand and move several rows forward.

There, that’s better. Now I can enjoy this unfunny comedy untroubled by the laughter of happy people.

Phew, I know I was tired and not in top moviewatching form, but this movie was stinky. I had watched the Get Smart TV show in reruns, and didn’t have any memories of it. Could it be that this movie was a hacky, unfunny remake of a show that itself was hacky and unfunny? The answer is “Probably yes!”

Anne Hathaway was cute, Alan Arkin was tolerable as the chief, and… that’s all I can say about it. I can’t give it anymore praise. There was an actor who was the equivalent of Richard Kiel’s Jaws character from the James Bond films (they even used him in a scene that was a ripoff of the airplane jump opener from Moonraker), there was Terence Stamp wasted, there was blah blah blah. BLAH.

As each gag and joke limped into view, I thought to myself, I should just walk out and go home. But I stuck it out, because I am a professional, even for shitty comedies.

Oh, shitty comedies. Why do you fill me with such despair?