Get Smart The Movie Characters
The protagonist in Get Smart is Maxwell Smart and you never found a worse nerd. An analyst in CONTROL, he dreams of being an agent someday and of course of winning the female agent who is the heroine. In real life, a guy who used to be fat, is still a foodie and who is a nerd to boot would probably get told, 'In your dreams!' but this is the world of the celluloid chimera where anything is possible, so you guessed it - his dreams do come true.
Max gets by even though his character isn't much, thanks to the special effects and the non-stop action. He is a very Johnny English kind of a character but Steve Carell is definitely easier on the eye than Rowan Atkinson. Max becomes Agent 86 and his role is a good foil to the woman who really dominates the film - Agent 99 played by Anne Hathaway. Agent 99 is the kick ass kind of heroine - very like Mrs. Smith in Mr. and Mrs. Smith? She's domineering, she's in your face, she's a lean, mean spy machine who just has no time to baby nerds and it comes through in the nasty comments and the belittling that she subjects Max to.
There are a lot of good actors that form the rest of the cast and one hopes that they lift the film to more than just a high action spy comedy. If the characters they play make a mark, it will foretell great days ahead for the movie. There's Agent 23 who is the kind of agent that Max aspires to be. The real, strong, he-man kind of character. There's the chief of CONTROL and his peers in the enemy camp KAOS, Siegfried and Shtarker. There's Agent Rana and Hymie the robot. And a few agents with numbers thrown in.
The problem with the characters is possibly that they are stereo-typed. With so many spy movies that have gone before this, a new one in the genre has to either go all out and be a spoof - and this one is dubbed an action comedy - or be unique in the thriller/spy story. In which case the characterization should have been much, much better. Now whether that is a flaw in the direction or the casting is anyone's guess but the fact remains that the characters don't really leave anything to remember them by behind.