Warner Bros. Pictures

The modern-day montage that opens Get Smart (a TV tuned to a cable news channel, a Subway sandwich tucked in the fridge) is this movie's announcement that it is not a mere remake of the television show on which it is based. Get Smart, the TV show, was a spy spoof set in the Cold War-crazed '60s. Get Smart, the movie, is a spy-themed action-comedy set in the just-plain-crazed here and now.

Coming on the (stiletto) heels of Sex and the City, this is another big summer movie adapted from the small screen. And while the history of TV-show movies is an almost unbroken procession of failures, Hollywood is now on a hot win streak, if you consider two a streak. Like Sex and the City, Get Smart reverses the small-screen-show equals big-screen-bomb equation. Interestingly, it does so by taking a completely different approach.

Rather than simply try to do a bigger-better version of the TV show, director Peter Segal and writers Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember have used the old show as source material for a new movie. It proves to be a smart (hah!) move since the show was already a spoof of that era's plethora of spy movies. Fealty to a show that today's generation of young moviegoers probably hasn't seen would likely go unrewarded.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Anne Hathaway and Steve Carell in a scene from the movie "Get Smart"

So instead of the show's wacky, slapstick tone, Get Smart presents itself as an action-filled spy movie that just happens to be really funny. And for the most part, it succeeds. Credit much of that success to Steve Carell, who as a reconstituted Maxwell Smart strikes just the right tone and manner. Mr. Carell's Smart is subdued, kind of flat but able to break out in hilarious fits of whatever the moment requires. When he learns that his lifelong dream of becoming a field agent is coming true, he calmly excuses himself, tries but fails to activate the "cone of silence," and then launches into a hysterical spree of celebration that everyone can hear.

Mr. Carell gets plenty of support in his efforts. Anne Hathaway steps into the role of the sexy-silly Agent 99, a role that made Barbara Feldon the object of countless crushes among a nation of adolescent male viewers. Ms. Hathaway proves she's got the timing and chops to match Mr. Carell step for step. She does so literally in perhaps the movie's funniest sequence in which the pair crash an evildoer's party.

She dances with Mr. Yellowcake-Uranium Smuggler while Smart dances with a, shall we say, generously proportioned woman. They get into a dance-off competition that yields several laugh-out-loud sight gags.

Also contributing to the winning effort is Dwayne Johnson, a.k.a. The Rock. As the supercool Agent 23 who is everything Max wishes he was, Mr. Johnson again shows that there are smarts and wit under all those muscles. A real treat amid all the silly fun and fireball-intensive action scenes are the contributions of a couple of cagey old-timers, Alan Arkin and Terence Stamp.

Speaking of fireballs and action scenes, this movie has plenty of them (too many in fact), almost all of which go on too long. This is the most obvious way that Get Smart plays to today's audience of teen moviegoers, and as the scenes of explosions and crashes pile up, they come off as just so much pyrotechnical pandering. A chase scene that involves planes, trains and automobiles seems to go on and on until you wish over-the-top would just be over.

Too bad the filmmakers didn't apply the same restraint they used when playing to the older, TV-show-loving segment of the audience. For them, there are lines and references to the show scattered through the movie like Easter eggs. If you know them and get them, it's a treat. If you don't, the movie just keeps moving, usually to something really funny, and a few times too often to something blowing up or crashing down.