Recently among the many trailers that routinely precede movies these days, my wife and I were entertained by a brief teaser for next summer's "Get Smart" film, starring Steve Carell.
It was very funny.
After the opening bit — with Agent 86, a k a Maxwell Smart (Carell), stuck in that phone booth that takes him to and from the headquarters of U.S. intelligence agency CONTROL — the physical gags performed by Carell made me think more of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in the original "Pink Panther" films.
Especially the bit where a beaded curtain begins to unravel.
Of course that teaser was about 90 seconds, whereas the movie will be somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours. This short promotional clip shows promise, but we can all name half-hour or hourlong TV shows that were torture to sit through as feature-length films.
Tom Arnold in the 1997 "McHale's Navy," anyone?
How about Will Smith and Kevin Kline in 1999's "Wild Wild West"?
Cedric the Entertainer in the 2005 "The Honeymooners"?
Others in the painful category include "The Mod Squad," "My Favorite Martian," "Car 54, Where Are You," "Lost in Space" and "Bean," as in "Mr. Bean" — an unfunny effort, despite repeating skits that were hysterical on TV.
Let's hope "Mr. Bean's Holiday," which opens today, fares better.
The point, of course, is that many a TV show has been adapted as a film — sometimes decades later — only to disappoint.
I'd like to see "Get Smart" succeed, but I'll take a wait-and-see attitude, knowing that far too many comedies devolve quickly into easy scatological or sexual gags.
And, actually, that includes the 1980 film "The Nude Bomb," which brought Don Adams back to his signature "Get Smart" role a decade after the show was canceled.
But even big-screen adaptations of popular TV series released while the shows were still on the air have all too often failed to live up to their small-screen origins: "Our Miss Brooks" (1956), "Batman" (1966), "Munster, Go Home!" (1966), "The X-Files" (1998). (An exception might be "McHale's Navy" in 1964, which did capture the spirit of that show.)
Recognizing that this is all purely subjective, other disappointments include "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," "Miami Vice," "Twilight Zone — The Movie," "Sgt. Bilko," "Starsky & Hutch" and the big-screen adaptations of the small-screen cartoons "Scooby-Doo," "Rocky & Bullwinkle," "Dudley Do-Right" and "Inspector Gadget."
Arguments can be made that the live-action films of "The Flintstones," "George of the Jungle" and "Scooby-Doo" fared better, as did animated features of "Beavis and Butt-Head" and "South Park" and the current "Simpsons Movie."
And critics and audiences were more pleased with big-screen versions of "Leave It to Beaver," "S.W.A.T.," "The Addams Family," "The Brady Bunch," "Maverick" and "Mission: Impossible."
The "Naked Gun" trilogy, adapted from a failed TV series that only ran six episodes, "Police Squad!" was also hugely popular, as was the film of "The Untouchables" (earning Sean Connery his Oscar).
The most successful TV-to-film adaptations, however, have to be the ongoing "Star Trek" franchise, and one of Harrison Ford's biggest hits, "The Fugitive."
Despite the law of averages, I really am hoping "Get Smart" falls into the latter category. I'm cautiously looking forward to it.
E-mail: hicks@desnews.com