Get Smart
** 1/2 RATING | This return to the late-’60s spy-vs.-spy series created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry isn’t perfect. But having Steve Carell in the role of Maxwell Smart, newbie CONTROL Agent 86, makes it pleasing. Sometimes it’s downright touching. The sensibly handsome comedian plays an ace analyst but bumbling agent to Anne Hathaway’s kick-hiney Agent 99. Carell generously shares the screen with others. They include Dwayne Johnson as Agent 23, Alan Arkin as The Chief. As gadget engineers, Masi Oka and Nate Torrence prove an affably geeky counterpoint to two agency bullies. Playing for team KAOS: Terence Stamp and Ken Davitian as Siegfried and Shtarker. There’s always been a teasing confusion to the title. Does it mean “nab that agent!” Or “Learn!”? Carell does a nimble job of keeping that tension alive. And Hathaway proves her mettle when she and Carell deliver a moment that upends the busy pace of the action-comedy for the better. Writers Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember aren’t always in control of the brew of comedy and contemporary anxieties about terrorism. Still, by movie’s end, we can imagine spending some more time with agents 86 and 99, and liking it. PG-13. 1 hour, 51 minutes. Lisa Kennedy
When Did You Last See Your Father?
** 1/2 RATING | You’d never think to pair Oscar winner Jim Broadbent and dashing leading man Colin Firth as father and son. But it works in “When Did You Last See Your Father?” a modestly affecting coming-of-age, coming-to- grips-with-death drama about a son who tries to understand his insufferable dad as he sits by his father’s deathbed. The film, based on a memoir by poet Blake Morrison, is about a son who has spent his life annoyed that his father could never put together “two little words, ‘well’ and ‘done.’ ” The bookish intellectual Blake (Firth, doing a good “wounded and confused”) grew up feeling overshadowed and ill-used by his gregarious, blustery dad (Broadbent, terrific as always), who lived for “little scams,” ways of getting more than his share out of life. PG-13. 1 hour, 32 minutes. Roger Moore, The Orlando Sentinel
