Warner Brothers' "Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control" represents a shrewd marketing tie-in ploy with the studio's big-budget Steve Carell revival of the Don Adams classic sitcom to attract viewers. Bruce (Masi Oka of "Heroes") and Lloyd (Nate Torrence of "Marksman") serve as CONTROL's equivalent of Q—the armor who furnishes gadgets to James Bond—in most of the 007 escapades. Bruce and Lloyd create gadgets for their field agents. Most of the time, these gadgets malfunction as exemplified by the 'cone of silence' in "Get Smart." Incidentally, Steve Carell doesn't appear in "Out of Control," but Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway of "Havoc") puts in a cameo and complains about these two geeks giving Max all the cool gadgets while she gets none.
This hare-brained 71 minute comedy with these two klutz-ups is sporadically funny, but never consistently hilarious. Bruce and Lloyd are sympathetic losers that we want to see win and they appear on the verge of their greatest triumph. They have developed what they call 'Optical Camouflage Technology' or a cloak that makes the wearer invisible. Initially, the major problem is the short-life of the battery. The Underchief (Larry Miller of "The Nutty Professor") is Bruce and Lloyd's boss. He is constantly breathing down their necks like a quasi-villain to goad them into perfecting the OCT. "Failure to Launch" scenarists Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember ramp up the suspense when somebody steals the invisibility cloak and our heroes run amok trying to retrieve it. A subplot about a man abducted by a ruthless dictator of a fictional nation, the Republic of Maraguay, a small angry nation sandwiched between Paraguay and Uruguary, complicates the issue. Meanwhile, although they aren't qualified for field work, Bruce and Lloyd tangle with the CIA and other henchmen to recover their greatest invention. One of the tiresome gags in this lame comedy is that everybody confuses Bruce for Lloyd and Lloyd for Bruce.
"Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control" is an outrageously priced DVD that contains few special features, and there is nothing special about the plot. Masi Oka and Nate Torrence are fun to watch, but they rarely blurt out sidesplitting dialogue and the plot is terminally predictable. Larry Miller gets the best line when he warns Lloyd about the repercussions should he fail to supply him with the OCT. "There's an old Navy expression. If I go down, you go down on me." The malapropism here is perfect and Miller delivers it without a self-conscious wink! Presumably, when Warner Brothers made "Get Smart," they must have filmed too much footage and had to decide what to do with the surfeit. The unfortunate thing about "Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control" is that a lot of people are going to buy this substandard movie with the mistaken assumption that it boasts additional footage of Steve Carell. Again, Steve Carell doesn't appear in this spin-off spoof. Perhaps the ultimate insult is the movie ticket that comes packaged in "Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control." The ticket carries a value of only $7.00 making it useful only for a matinée, talk about cheap! Altogether, this item works on the level of an inferior National Lampoon video.
This hare-brained 71 minute comedy with these two klutz-ups is sporadically funny, but never consistently hilarious. Bruce and Lloyd are sympathetic losers that we want to see win and they appear on the verge of their greatest triumph. They have developed what they call 'Optical Camouflage Technology' or a cloak that makes the wearer invisible. Initially, the major problem is the short-life of the battery. The Underchief (Larry Miller of "The Nutty Professor") is Bruce and Lloyd's boss. He is constantly breathing down their necks like a quasi-villain to goad them into perfecting the OCT. "Failure to Launch" scenarists Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember ramp up the suspense when somebody steals the invisibility cloak and our heroes run amok trying to retrieve it. A subplot about a man abducted by a ruthless dictator of a fictional nation, the Republic of Maraguay, a small angry nation sandwiched between Paraguay and Uruguary, complicates the issue. Meanwhile, although they aren't qualified for field work, Bruce and Lloyd tangle with the CIA and other henchmen to recover their greatest invention. One of the tiresome gags in this lame comedy is that everybody confuses Bruce for Lloyd and Lloyd for Bruce.
"Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control" is an outrageously priced DVD that contains few special features, and there is nothing special about the plot. Masi Oka and Nate Torrence are fun to watch, but they rarely blurt out sidesplitting dialogue and the plot is terminally predictable. Larry Miller gets the best line when he warns Lloyd about the repercussions should he fail to supply him with the OCT. "There's an old Navy expression. If I go down, you go down on me." The malapropism here is perfect and Miller delivers it without a self-conscious wink! Presumably, when Warner Brothers made "Get Smart," they must have filmed too much footage and had to decide what to do with the surfeit. The unfortunate thing about "Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control" is that a lot of people are going to buy this substandard movie with the mistaken assumption that it boasts additional footage of Steve Carell. Again, Steve Carell doesn't appear in this spin-off spoof. Perhaps the ultimate insult is the movie ticket that comes packaged in "Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control." The ticket carries a value of only $7.00 making it useful only for a matinée, talk about cheap! Altogether, this item works on the level of an inferior National Lampoon video.