Huge cast, big budget, and old TV characters? Must be summer. Up on the retro retread block this time is Get Smart, the classic spy spoof starring Don Adams and Barbara Feldon, out June 20.

The original Mel Brooks/Buck Henry series that ran from 1965 to 1970 was a silly send-up of the '60s spy scene that Austin Powers would parody thirty years later: a scene that included James Bond, The Avengers, Our Man Flint, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

In the remake, KAOS has infiltrated CONTROL headquarters and killed all but two of their agents: 23 (played by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) and 99 (Anne Hathaway). Steve Carell plays Maxwell Smart, a lowly and, for some reason, formerly fat analyst who is put into the field as Agent 86. Alan Arkin plays the nameless Chief, and Terence Stamp plays KAOS's Siegfried. Bernie Kopell, the original Siegfried (and Doc from The Love Boat) does make a cameo, and there may be others. Carell has denied rumors of a Barbara Feldon appearance, but that may be a ruse.

They did make a Get Smart movie back in 1980, The Nude Bomb. (At least the title was half right.) But then a 1989 TV movie, Get Smart Again, was successful enough to spawn a short-lived 1995 TV series, with Don Adams's 86 promoted to Chief of CONTROL and his and 99's son Zach as an agent. (Zach was played by -- hold on -- Andy Dick. Unfortunately it's never made it to video or DVD, because it sounds like a slice of pure insanity.)

Advance word on the big-screen remake is not so good. The Get Smart fan site WouldYouBelieve.com calls it "The old get a great cast to create a remake from a weak script and hope it turns out okay trick." The movie's humor seems to have crossed the fine line of silliness that the show was able to walk for teenage boy fart-n-puke gags (one review of an advance screening compared it to Tommy Boy).

Anne Hathaway as 99 is downright creepy. She looks troublingly like Carell's daughter; scenes with them together look like he's maybe taking her on a college trip. And the nerdy analyst-turned-secret-agent plot seems uncomfortably close to Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English, and that only came out in 2003. (Hey, if you're going to steal, steal from the best.)

Steve Carell was hilarious on The Daily Show, and his version of Ricky Gervais's role in The Office has slowly grown on me, but I haven't been particularly impressed by his jump to the big screen. Even his hits, like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I just don't get. But he's an inspired match for Don Adams, as long as there's a good script for him to rely on. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case.

In a truly bizarre move, ten days after the movie is released a straight-to-DVD feature will come out, Get Smarter: Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control, which follows minor characters from the theatrical release (played by Masi Oka from Heroes and Nate Torrence from Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip). Yeah, because if it's a big hit, people are going to want more, but without any of the stars. Riiight. Didn't they already try that when they spun off The Lone Gunmen from The X-Files? And we all remember what a raging success that was.

I'm a Get Smart fan and there's a great new DVD release of all five seasons, and it's not even that I hate movies based on TV shows, even though it does smack of hackery. But from the trailers and the gossip and the sneak previews -- this just doesn't seem promising.

Impressed? I didn't write "Missed it by that much!" even once. Good luck finding another movie writer with that kind of restraint.

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