Peter Segal’s faintly amusing blockbuster, Get Smart, is an absurd spy movie inspired by the Mel Brooks and Buck Henry 1960s television spoof of the same name. It’s probably inch perfect, but from this distance it looks like a rejected chapter from the Naked Gun franchise, and infinitely more wooden. Steve Carell plays the Frank Drebin role of Maxwell Smart, a humble pen-pusher suddenly elevated to the role of Chief Spy.

Carell’s first mission is to take out that one-note acting disaster Terence Stamp, who promises to vaporise the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra – and President James Caan – if a cheque for $200 billion isn’t on his desk by teatime. What’s a text-book stickler to do in such a crisis? Look up agent Anne Hathaway’s skirt is the short and fashionable answer. Carell has the vocal charm of a broken record. Hathaway is the impressive scenery.

12A, 111 minutes

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