Steve Carell’s Maxwell Smart gets a little off course in the film adaptation of Get Smart.

WARNER BROS. / Tracy Bennett

Steve Carell tries to fill the shoe-phone shoes of Don Adams in Get Smart, a lame, not-so-funny update of the 1960s TV series.

Adams, with his nasal voice that was full of false bravado, was a natural as C.O.N.T.R.O.L. spy Maxwell Smart, a naïve doofus who bungled his way through operations against K.A.O.S., an international evil empire run by mastermind Siegfried. Of course, as many screw-ups as Smart put into play, in the end evil was always thwarted, until the next week, thanks to Barbara Feldon’s Agent 99, who always helped pull Max over the rough spots.

The TV series, which ran from 1965 to 1970, with a brief failed attempt to revive it in the winter of 1995, was conceived by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry as a spoof of the popular James Bond and other spy movies of the era.

Writing partners Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember (who previously wrote the Matthew McConaughey hit Failure to Launch together) have tried to update their plot for the new screen version of Get Smart, but still wind up stuck in a ’60s time warp. Yes, the shoe phone makes a brief appearance. So do the Cone of Silence (looking much snazzier), and the telephone booth entrance to C.O.N.T.R.O.L. headquarters. But the plot is rather silly, the jokes are slight, Terence Stamp is a pale villain and there’s little chemistry between Carell’s Max and Anne Hathaway’s brittle Agent 99. They seem to be doing no more than going through the motions.

Carell, less a comedian than someone who has dabbled in comic roles, lacks the snappy assuredness of Adams as he bumbles his way through the convoluted plot, which revolves around attempts by K.A.O.S. to threaten the world with a series of nuclear missiles that they plan to fire off if a $200-billion ransom is not paid. Carell’s funniest moment is a slapstick romp when he tries to cross a room that’s crisscrossed by deadly laser beams, using spastic body movements that become wackier after a rat scurries under his shirt.

Despite some frantic running around and the occasional presence of Dwayne Johnson (formerly known as “The Rock”), who has little to do until the end, the plot lumbers along from action piece to action piece without much sense that the world could be blown up at any second by Siegfried pushing a button. Director Peter Segal cut his teeth on parody, with Leslie Nielsen’s Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult, and went on to do The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps and the Adam Sandler hits The Longest Yard, 50 First Dates and Anger Management. But rather than surprise and fast pacing, Get Smart wanders along from Point A to Point B predictably.

Alan Arkin makes a pugnaciously feisty impression as the Chief of C.O.N.T.R.O.L. who promotes Max from analyst to prime spy. James Caan does a funny impression as George W. Bush, with a slight drawl and a mispronunciation of the word “nuclear.”

But the plot seems more a spoof of popular spy parody films from the ’60s — James Coburn as Derek Flint; Dean Martin (yes!) as Matt Helm — than it owes to James Bond.

Hathaway, as the strong-willed, smart, self-assured 99 is gorgeous, but she never makes a solid connection with Carell, who seems overwhelmed by the gadgetry and the script complications. Rather than plunging ahead with the fake assuredness of Adams’ dimwitted but endearing Max, whose luck saw him through tight spots, Carell is cooler and not as marvelously klutzy. He comes across more as a guy who means well than as someone who makes it through the day on luck and the help of a guardian angel.

**Get Smart

Starrring: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp.

Rated: PG-13, contains violence, mild profanity.

mjanuson@projo.com