In my post for Dan in Real Life, I stated that I was officially experiencing Steve Carell overload. Which is still true. By my estimation, Steve Carell has starred in about 200 movies over the past year (OK, so it’s actually only 4 or 5, but it does feels like a lot more).

I guess that’s why I was so quick to discredit his new movie, Get Smart. That is, until I saw this trailer.

The idea behind Get Smart is pretty simple: bumbling idiot becomes international spy. However, the idea behind casting Steve Carell in this role is nothing short of brilliant.

Get Smart is essentially a live-action version of Inspector Gadget. Or to put it in terms of more modern pop-cultural phenomenon, Get Smart is what would happen if Michael from The Office became an international spy. Which is exactly why this casting is so spot on. There’s a lot of good comedic actors around these days, but none of them do the self-righteous moron character quite as well as Steve Carell does. And this movie seems to be the natural progression for Carell’s self-righteous moron character. In other words, if you think he was funny running an office, wait till you see him trying to save the world…

So I guess that Get Smart is going to be a SEE IT for me. Granted, I still wish that Carell would tease us a little more by making fewer movies. However, this is certainly one of the movies that he should have made. And from the looks of the trailer, I expect it to be damn funny.

Get Smart is rated PG-13 and opens on June 20. (Official site)

Is it just me, or does Steve Carell seem to be everywhere these days? Not only did he have Evan Almighty this summer, in the past month alone, we’ve also seen two new trailers for movies that he’s starring in (Get Smart and this one). Ever since he popped his leading-man cherry with The 40 Year Old Virgin, Carell has definitely become the new Hollywood IT guy, taking the reigns from Will Ferrell, who not too long ago took the reigns from Jim Carey.

The thing about Carell, though, is it feels like his induction into the upper echelon of Hollywood has been somewhat accelerated compared to Farrell and Carey. Jim Carey, for example, had a brilliant run. After Ace Ventura, he did about a movie a year, and they were all highly anticipated. And when he played his first semi-dramatic role in The Truman Show, everyone was on the edge of their seats. Will Farrell’s rise to the top was a bit more saturating, but even his was tasteful. He was smart enough to play some supporting role here and there, so that we didn’t get Will Ferrell overload. And he waited as long as one can expect him to wait before his first semi-dramatic role in Stranger Than Fiction.

But it seems like Steve Carell is doing it all in fast-forward. It’s as though he read the manual written by Carey and Farell and just decided to skip right to the good parts. I mean, 40 Year Old Virgin was great, but for his next comedic role to be the summer blockbuster Evan Almighty is astounding. And the fact that he jumped right into the semi-dramatic thing with Little Miss Sunshine is almost unfair. Maybe it’s just me, but sometimes I like an actor to tease me a little bit, to make me beg for it. Doesn’t Carell know that if he gives it away too easily, we won’t respect him in the morning?

Steve Carell is a great actor, so I can’t fault him there. But I’m definitely worried that we’re going to be sick of him long before we should be. For example, this Dan in Real Life movie doesn’t interest me in the slightest. I’ll RENT IT I suppose, but if he’d done it right; if he’d taken his time and put out a movie a year (instead of three), maybe by the time this one came out, I would be craving some Carell so badly that I would have had no choice but to see it in the theaters. But alas, he’s ruined it now. It was good while it lasted, but I doubt I’ll even call him again.

Dan in Real Life is rated PG-13 and opens October 26. (Official Site)

When I was a kid, my brother and I had two favorite cassette tapes that we listened to over and over again. One was an Ice-T album, which we loved because it was the filthiest shit our young ears had ever heard before, and the other was the Bill Cosby routine where he imagines how Noah probably reacted when God told him to build the Ark.

I recently listened to that old routine again (you can check it out here if you’re interested), and it’s still pretty damn funny. And the reason it’s still funny is because it’s still hilarious to think about how a normal guy would have reacted to some voice in the sky telling him to build a giant boat in preparation for an upcoming flood (personally, I would have checked myself into the nearest mental institution).

This brings me to Evan Almighty.

When I first heard that they were making a sequel to Bruce Almighty, I was pretty excited. Bruce Almighty was surprisingly entertaining, and replacing Jim Carrey with Steve Carell is a brilliant idea. But then, when I saw the trailer and realized that the story-line centers around Carell’s character building an Ark, I nearly climaxed.

As you may know from my post on The Reaping, I’m a big fan of using biblical events as gimmicks for films (I’m pretty sure God would have used CGI to write the Bible if the technology had been available at the time). And the story of Noah building a giant Ark purely on speculation of a possible flood is really one of the best stories in that whole book. What’s more, the idea of bringing that story back to life in modern times (and with the comedic slant that’s implied in the story anyways), well, that’s nothing short of genius.

It does concern me a little that the trailer makes the movie seem like a remake of The Santa Claus. However, I’m just going to ignore that fact and go SEE IT anyways. After all, if there’s one thing the story of Noah’s Ark taught us, it’s that we have to have faith in the creator.

Evan Almighty is rated PG and opens June 22. (Official Site)

I finally saw Little Miss Sunshine recently, and I am happy to report that all the rave reviews in the trailer are completely accurate. There were several points where Jared and I were literally laughing out loud. The trailer reveals just enough and doesn’t reveal any of the hilarious secrets of the movie. Little Miss Sunshine just opened nationwide, hurry up and see it.

Previously: Little Miss Sunshine trailer

When young Olive unexpectedly gets a slot in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant, her dysfunctional family piles into a vintage VW bus to cheer her on. All the buzz (that I skimmed anyway) coming out of the Sundance Film Festival in January was all about Little Miss Sunshine. By the Oscars in March, presenter Steve Carell was already being touted as a potential nominee for next year’s awards. Rave reviews are packed into this trailer. And best of all the movie looks like a funny, feel-good flick, and those are always my favorites. It times like that I’m glad I live in New York and I get to see these great films weeks ahead of middle America. See it, See it, See it.

(Official Site)