Movies opening this week

Get Smart (Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, dir. Peter Segal)
My review in Las Vegas Weekly
I used to love watching reruns of Get Smart on Nick at Nite when I was a kid, and I like both Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, so I had a certain guarded optimism about this movie. But Segal is an Adam Sandler house director with not much of a sense of satire, and the movie just tries so hard to be an action-comedy that it loses what made the original funny in the first place. Carell doesn't even bring much to the role, and really almost any charismatic actor with action experience could have pulled this part off. It's a waste of Carell's comedic talents, and of some great source material as well. Wide release

The Love Guru (Mike Myers, Jessica Alba, Romany Malco, Justin Timberlake, dir. Marco Schnabel)
This movie is getting absolutely pulverized in reviews, and it seems like people have been preparing for the chance to do so for months now. I, too, have been pre-hating Myers' new film since it was first announced, but I have to say it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. It was certainly not good, but it wasn't nearly as unbearable as the last Austin Powers movie, and at least it was 20 minutes shorter than Get Smart, and full of jokes. Mostly unfunny, repetitive jokes, sure, but I do have a shameful soft spot for terrible puns and labored meta-jokes, both of which are among Myers' favorite styles of humor. He also apparently loves dick jokes and juvenile bathroom humor, which dominate the movie. In fact, the entire thing is a ridiculously self-indulgent vanity project, filled with everything Myers likes: self-help platitudes, hockey, musical numbers, his annoying celebrity friends. Wayne's World is one of my favorite movies of all time, so it makes me sad to see Myers fall so far, but at the same time I have to admit that I laughed at this movie a few times, and found it too genial and lighthearted to hate with the vitriol that so many have been directing at it. Wide release