The Intelligent Romantic Comedy of the Year

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2019)

11 June 2005. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is an intelligent romantic comedy that ups the bar for using action-adventure as a way to highlight marital discord and resolution. Unlike the trailers, this comedy isn't really about tapping into the adolescent male need for speed and violence, in fact one of the primary scenes that includes action feels off balance in the movie. The movie begins as a romantic comedy with Mr. and Mrs. Smith in a marital counseling session (while the movie credits are being shown!) and the first third of the movie is actually way slow for an action-adventure movie, thus expectations are challenged as to the pacing of this movie if one was expecting one type of movie and ended up with another.
The delicious interplay between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is backed up by good cinematography, a sensitivity to acting and expression (not only dialogue), and so good relational, emotional punch lines that become available under this ridiculous scenario of two assassins being married to each other. The underlying theme of marital relationships within such a conflicted profession allows the screenplay to delve into the nature of marriage further than is possible in reality. It allows the audience to be exposed to an alternative reality, that tests certain truths about men and women in relationships where one has to decide between life and death of the self and the life and death of the relationship that are not ordinarily available in normal circumstances. Thus film can take us places we cannot go in reality, and explore certain concepts in an entertaining manner.
While not perfect, this movie goes into comedy romance in an area that is tapped for its gems. The plot has some holes in regards to plausibility (much like Lara Croft movies), but it is the comic approach to revealing more about marriage than about feasibility and realism that counts here (see Indiana Jones, Star Wars), that is a stake. The pacing and the tone of the film undergo stresses by this bold attempt to manage a script that jumps into murky waters of romantic comedy and deciding to go for the feels good, instead of the dark, black comedy approach of "The War of the Roses" (1989) with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner that could be better described as a comedy-drama. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is an example of the continual evolution, exploration of the romantic comedy genre that highlights the nature of the industry is progressing, not deteriorating. Eight of Ten Stars.