A very funny man, Steve Carell, but he's spreading himself a bit thin of late.

This revives the 1960s TV spy spoof in which data-crunching desk jockey Maxwell Smart (Carell) finally gets his big break into fieldwork for US spy agency Control. He's teamed with gorgeous Agent 99 (Anne Hathaway) on a mission to foil world domination by evil mastermind Terence Stamp, so we sit back and wait for the laughs. Which come pretty slow and infrequent, though Carell does his straight-faced best to act out the A-Z of Hilarious Pratfalls.

Characterwise, he's closest in spirit to his hapless naïf in The 40 Year Old Virgin, though the funny lines are much harder to come by, and Get Smart gets bogged down in silly stuntwork and interminable chases. Even with likeable support from Hathaway, Dwayne (formerly known as The Rock) Johnson and Alan Arkin, the time ticks by very sluggishly.

Watch the trailer here: