The battle of the sexes, again

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2005)

The first surprise in Mr. & Mrs. Smith is the beginning: As the couple is interviewed by their marriage counselor we get scenes derived from the world of Woody Allen. It sets the tone for things to come: We see the couple in suburbia with their mechanical, uninteresting life (peas, please). The whole action part of the movie is set up parallel to the marriage crisis unfolding. First they have minor quarrels, the relationship explodes when finding out their true identities and war is upon them. Only by working together against the outside world and destroying their suburban home along the way, true happiness sets in. So, the action is interwoven with the marriage crisis and the comedy, but there's another level in the story: They frequently comment the whole story ("Happy endings are just stories that haven't finished").
The suburbia-theme can be found throughout the whole movie. The end scenes first start off with a family car where several features of it are used to fight their adversaries; then we end up in a kind of Home Depot-store, just the kind of battleground they usually go for shopping and feel right at home to battle their enemies.
The names Jane and John Smith already suggest their anonymous, uninteresting lives. Also take a look at the agencies / companies they work for: Jane's company is up-to-date, but only inhabited by women, John's is old-fashioned and looks redundant in the modern world.
Simon Kinberg did a good job here. See the memorable quotes-section for some nice examples of how clever this is written on a basic level. You start wondering if the script of xXx: State of the Union was wasted, because it had more potential. I am curious what he makes of X-Men 3. Doug 'Bourne Identity' Liman's fast-paced, fluent and light directorial style fits in well. He adds some jokes to the already many side-jokes and in-jokes in the script (at least I lost count; Benjamin wearing a Fight Club T-shirt, in most scenes there are jokes in the background visible). But it is overlong like most movies these days so cutting it by about 20 minutes would have made a better movie. And why do they keep showing previews where they already show the whole movie (De Palma's Femme Fatale-preview once contained literally the whole movie, showed 100 times faster).
This is the kind of movie you forget about 15 minutes after leaving the theater, but it is worth a look because few blockbuster movies succeed in integrating action and comedy properly.