Other than the stars a waste of your time

Rating: 3/10 (11 June 2005)

The film's concept is a derivative of the wildly uneven True Lies, only this time both husband and wife lead a boring double life instead of just one partner. And that's about as deep as we get. We've got Brad! We've got Angelina! Who needs anything else? Okay, so the film isn't the disgusting train wreck that Bewitched probably will be (notice the strong shift in the ad campaign, anyone?), but it's a long, long way from what it could have been. True Lies worked because Arnie played the role to perfection, the division between his real life and his work life was well done, and, frankly, Tom Arnold gave his best performance ever.
Here, we don't have the skill that movie took to make. Of course, while I'm no huge James Cameron fan, he at least knows how to direct. The same cannot be said of indie fave Doug Liman (Go and Swingers, two utterly reprehensible films), whom you'd think would have learned something about spy flicks from working on TWO Bourne movies, but no. Care to make it worse? The screenwriter (and that term is used in a very loose sense), Simon Kinberg, was the 'script doctor' for Elektra and Charlie's Angels 2. In any country where I made the laws, they could put you to death for such gross incompetent mangling of the English language (those movies had script doctors? Hollywood really is in an advanced state of decline).
Smith tries to balance the line between action film and comedy and fails at both. The lines aren't funny (there's a very few chuckles) and the action is all rote, things blowing up and tons of bad guys flying through the air. At least John and Jane (no kidding, those are the character's names) get a little bloody, but not much. Can't distract people from that glamour make-up and lighting.
Which is too bad, because Pitt and Jolie are two of the most likable stars on the screen these days, and their pairing should have set off sparks (it does occasionally, but with much less wattage than you would expect). A potentially hilarious scene after they learn the truth of each other's identities and set about exposing all the lies they've told is bungled by having it take place in the middle of an extended and uninteresting car chase. Much like action, dialogue requires a certain rhythm to work at its best; but why should the man who 'script doctored' Elektra know anything about writing? In the end Smith is mere Hollywood pap; show the flyovers some pretty faces, blow some stuff up, make them laugh a little bit, give them a few sexy scenes to fantasize about. Smith isn't a reprehensible film  the mere presence of Pitt and Jolie pretty much negates that possibility  but it is shockingly hollow given what it could have been. Even these two stars can't elevate this film to much more than watchable, sadly enough. With the right (or any) writing, directing, and editing, this could have been a fun movie. Pity it's not.