Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Steve Carell is in CONTROL as Maxwell Smart, the novice agent often out of his depth but never out of options in this action comedy pitting him against the nuclear scheme of the evil spy group KAOS. Anne Hathaway partners with Max as ever-capable Agent 99. And director Peter Segal guides his stars through the dangerous realm of molar radios, multifunction pocketknives, exploding dental floss and more.

I never saw the original series this was based on and I’m only vaguely familiar with the back story. Still, this one ended up entertaining more than I expected. Carell doesn’t try too hard for the laughs and the situations don’t delve do far into the plain silly. I was afraid this would be more of a spoof film in the vein of Spy Hard but thankfully it only meanders into that territory once in awhile.

The video presentation is largely solid but the mix of film and HD video footage makes for an uneven experience. It was easy to tell when the film was shot one way over the other, the trademark smoothness of the HD cameras was quite evident and panning didn’t seem quite as natural as the film footage. Still, detail is impeccable and the depth of image from the HD camera work is outstanding. Colors are quite vivid and really lend to the contrast of the image. I saw some very minor ringing early on but it was hardly intrusive.

I won’t beat the dead horse in regards to the lossy Dolby Digital soundtrack this Blu-ray offers. Warner should know better by now and consumers should let them know how they feel with their wallets. The Dolby mix delivers some solid dynamics and low end but the spatial quality of the mix suffers. There just isn’t that open sense of fine detail that a lossless mix provides. It may be subtle, but you miss it when its gone. Dialogue is clean and tonal balance is very natural but I’m still disappointed in Warner’s hit or miss audio support.

Extras include two versions of the film. You can enable the Blu-ray to interject the film with outtakes from the film making it a bit longer, but not as polished. Some of the outtakes are pretty funny, but I recommend viewing them on their own. You also get a retrospective on the original series, some behind the scenes production features and a look at the production from the set. A digital copy is also included on a separate disc and a DVD interactive game.

This one ended up being better than I was expecting but it didn’t score a home run with me. Fans of campy comedy work will probably get more from it than I did. The video presentation is solid and Warner has included a nice supplemental package so fans will probably be pleased.