Get Smart – The Complete 1994 – 1995 Series (Sony DVD)
Picture: C Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: C+
After two
feature-length revivals yielded no results, The Cold War seemed like the end of
Spy films, TV shows and all their spoofs.
However, thanks to hit film revivals of James Bond (GoldenEye) and Mission:
Impossible (with Tom Cruise) among others, Spy films were big box office
again and for the first time since its debut then 30 years ago, Get Smart was back as a TV series. Don Adams was back as Maxwell Smart and even
Barbara Feldon was back as Agent 99, still happily married to each other
decades later and still working for the CONTROL. Now, however, they had a son who was joining
them on missions. Unfortunately for the
show, he was played by Andy Dick.
Zack
Smart (Dick) was taking orders from father Max, who was now the new Chief. 99 was a congresswoman, still helping out
with the missions, but we never hear any other name for her, so who knows what
name she won her seat under. Elaine Hendrix
joined them as Agent 66 and KAOS was back as an evil corporation. The seven episodes, including a few
appearances by Bernie Kopell as Siegfried and a cameo in one episode by Robert
Goulet, include:
1)
Get Smart
2)
Casino Evil
3)
Goodbye Ms. Chip
4)
Shooting Up The Charts
5)
Passenger 99
6)
Wurst Enemies
7)
Liver Let Die
The
series added new humor that almost worked, but was too distant from the
original to ever make that work, while there is more of Feldon and Adams than
expected, but this needed a little more work overall and fans could site dozens
of TV ads Adams did that felt more like the show. We’ll skip the obvious jokes about the
impossibilities of Adams and Feldon giving birth to anyone like Dick, but
Dick’s presence makes this a curio along with the release of the new 2008
motion picture inspiring this release to begin with.
After Police Squad/Naked Gun, this still seemed behind the times, but it is now
bittersweet and ironic as the last of the pre-9/11 works of the franchise. As a matter of fact, outside of The Paper Chase, I cannot remember any
TV show havin as many comebacks as Get
Smart. Despite the shortcomings of
this version, it is worth a look, but only after you’ve seen the original 1960s
show. I can’t wait to compare it to the
new film either.
The 1.33
X 1 image was shot on film and has a consistent look, but unfortunately, it was
finished on analog NTSC video resulting in aliasing errors all over each
episode. It is a shame this could not be
fixed, but it is watchable otherwise.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is good for its age, has no surrounds and
the show had enough money in it for good sound recording. The new version of the theme song is fair at
best, but the laugh track is more awkward.
Except for two dumb webisodes, severely cut down versions of episodes of
T.J. Hooker and NewsRadio, there are unfortunately no extras.
For more
on the classic original series, read about its entire run in HBO Home
Video/Time-Life’s huge DVD box set release at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6400/Get+Smart+–+The+Complete+Series
- Nicholas Sheffo
