From the first moment I saw a coming attraction a few months back, I had the highest hopes for MR AND MRS SMITH. It would rock. It was going to be awesome. Then I saw it. It didn't. It wasn't. I can only muster 1 thumb up. This makes me sad.
Eh, not that sad, because MR AND MRS SMITH was entertaining enough when it focused on the stilted marriage and coy cat-and-mouse game between the Mr (Brad Pitt) and the Mrs (Angelina Jolie). The set up is that a perfect, suburban, bored, supernaturally attractive married couple lead secret lives --neither knows the other is a paid assassin, and when by chance they get assigned the same hit, it slowly dawns on them that they don't really know exactly with whom they've been eating breakfast for the past few years. Naturally, their next mission is to kill each other. And why not? Were they ever really in love? If they were, isn't it all over now? Or is their boredom just a symptom of the toxic effects of living a lie? Is Mrs madder because Mr lied to her or because he screwed up her job? Is he madder because of the lies or the fact that she's more experienced? Will anyone ever look better in an apron than Angelina Jolie? Will the prospect of losing the other cause one or both to realize their love is true? Will this happen before it's too late? And what if then the whole rest of Assassins, Inc decides to take them out? Who's your daddy now?
These are just a few of the questions the movie attempts to answer, and it does so with some humor and sexy sparks between the stars. It forgets to ask how Brad feels about the fact that more people, female and male, have a crush on Angelina than on him, but I imagine he's getting used to that. I also still can't figure out how THE O.C.'s Seth Cohen ended up in here, unless it's just that actor Adam Brody has only one good character in him.
Unfortunately, the movie gets bogged down in its second half with an endless and unbelievable barrage of shoot-outs and car chases and violence. You may ask, how can you have a movie about married assassins who get orders to kill each other without shoot outs, car chases, and violence? Of course, you can't. And why would you? But you can use those explosive elements sparingly and in service to the story. At some point here they got unhooked and became the story. Also, when you're using violence in a humorous context, there's a limit to how "mean-spirited" it can be. To be completely successful requires a subtlety that this crew lacked, and I'm afraid they crossed the line at least once (there's no humor in a scene of Mr supposedly kicking Mrs -- hard -- while she's down) and maybe a few times, which just blows the whole ambience of the film.
Even after the story devolves to shoot-chase-shoot-duck-explode, there are still a few funny bits -- I liked that Mrs Smith was far more accomplished than Mr -- but they're overwhelmed, and eventually I lost interest.
But B is for Brangelina, and all the attendant brouhaha that entails. Were they good together on screen? Heck, yeah. The parts of the movie that focused on them, on a small, one-on-one scale, were great, and there should have been more of them. Those who know me know that I am easily entertained, especially by Brad or Angelina, especially when the latter has a role where she kicks butt. Those who know me know I have seen both LARA CROFT movies. (Yes, if you must know, in the theater. And again on TV. What? Like you have no cheesy secret movie moments?) Ditto OCEANS ELEVEN AND TWELVE.
Thus, it pains me to say that MR AND MRS SMITH, which I wanted to have be an A+ movie, was no more than a B. If this is where updating the romantic comedy for a new century is taking us, I'm getting a divorce.