Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control DVD: Review By Brian Gallagher

I didn't get a chance to see Get Smart during it's theatrical run, mainly because it just looked kinda stupid. I was fairly intrigued when I heard about a spin-off movie, Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, because I think the idea of these little spin-off, straight-to-DVD flicks are a pretty damn good idea. Still, the regular movie looked stupid so I had no reason to believe this would be any better... and it wasn't.

Bruce (Masi Oka) and Lloyd (Nate Torrence) are the two techies at CONTROL, basically the Get Smart versions of Q from the Bond series, only there are two of them, they're not British and they're, well, nerds. They just put the finishing touches on their latest device, the Optical Camouflage Technology, or O.C.T. Basically, it's an invisibility cloak. After they throw a big party in the lab to celebrate their latest invention, the cloak goes missing and, since all COTROL's top agents are, you know, saving the world, it's up to Bruce and Lloyd to track down who stole the cloak and get it back to CONTROL before KAOS gets a hold of it and uses it for dastardly deeds, and such.

For one, it really isn't that clear when this movie takes place. The DVD cover says this film runs parallel to the Get Smart flick, but that makes sense in some ways, and it just doesn't in other ways. I'm not really sure, though, since I haven't seen the Get Smart flick and I don't know how much Bruce and Lloyd are really in the flick, or if they set this movie up with something in that movie, but who really cares. We do get some cameos from people in the Get Smart flick like Terry Crews' Agent 91, Patrick Warburton's robotic Hymie, Kelly Karbacz as the COTROL receptionist Judy and a hilarious little cameo from the lovely Anne Hathaway as Agent 99. That part is actually one of the ONLY good things about this whole movie, though.

I liked Oka and Torrence together as the title characters, because they mesh with each other quite nicely and have a pretty good vibe as a team. They deliver some decent performances, as does the lovely Jayma Mays as Nina, Bruce's new girlfriend, but the problem is they're given some absolute drivel in terms of material. The script was written by Get Smart's writers Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember and it is just chocked full of failed joke after failed joke. The actual plot isn't that bad, but I think they spend too much time on the romance angle, with Oka and Mays' new relationship and Torrence trying to get together with the woman who stole the cloak (for noble reasons, though) Isabelle (Marika Dominczyk).They cram a lot in this 71-minute feature, but there is just so much that is so unnecessary they should've just stuck to doing this as a 45-minute thing instead of trying to add a lot more crap in here to make it just barely feature-length. I think one of the problems here is that Astle and Ember, before writing both these Get Smart flicks, had worked primarily in TV, with Failure to Launch as their only other feature in their resume. Director Gil Junger has also worked primarily in TV as well, aside from a few film gigs like 10 Things I Hate About You and the Martin Lawrence bomb Black Knight. I think this trio really just thinks they're a lot funnier than they actually are, which results in some painfully unfunny moments throughout practically the entire flick.

Even if you liked Get Smart, I doubt you'd like this. While it features some nice performances from Oka, Torrence and Mays, it's written and directed rather horribly and it's lowest-common-denominator filmmaking at its worst.

We only get three things here so lets get through this as fast as possible. Bruce and Lloyd Confessionals are first and it's rather boring. They're actual confessionals, a la Real World, but with everyone in character, talking about their thoughts and crap like that. They're really not that funny, there are way too many of them and at 15 minutes long, I'd skip it... unless you need something to put you to sleep. In that case, it's right up your alley.

Cue the Anti-Follicular Device is next and it's a five-minute look at this weird device that makes all your hair fall out. We see some of the parts in the flick and see J.P. Manoux and Bryan Callen, the two actors who are affected by this device in the movie, go through their makeup techniques for those scenes. Pretty lame.

Bruce and Lloyd Tech is the last feature we get here and we get some actual scientists and filmmakers talking about the various gadgets in the flick like the Optical Camoflauge Technology, the Tickle Taser and whether or not they're possible in real life. We get a little too much from director Gil Junger and I get the feeling that he's really using this is a stand-up forum and it's pretty lame. This is a little too long at 13 minutes but there's some interesting stuff here.

The film is presented in both the widescreen format, enhanced for widescreen televisions, and the fullscreen format in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

The sound is handled through the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround format.

They have one of those fancy changer covers, where one image turns into another, like they had on the lame Rush Hour 3 packaging. Maybe they only reserve this stuff for really lame movies. Could be... Anyway, the front has a shot of Bruce and Lloyd as normal, and another shot of them with explosions around them and the Out of Control subtitle. Boring. The back has some more pics from the flick, a synopsis, small special features listing and the billing block and tech specs.

While I do like the idea of a straight-to-DVD spinoff like this, and I think this is a good idea to be used on other flicks, this just isn't a very good flick, despite the best efforts of some talented people in front of the camera.