BY GLENN WHIPP >FILM WRITER

How smart was it to remake "Get Smart" as a movie?

The big-screen version of the classic Cold War spy comedy "Get Smart" arrives in theaters today, nearly four decades after the show went off the air and several years after Jim Carrey announced plans to star as bumbling Agent 86, Maxwell Smart.

Early reviews have been brutal. Expectations among the show's hard-core fans are muted. The movie, however, is still expected to rule the box office this weekend, bringing in audiences born long after the series' 138-episode run ended in 1970.

Carrey is long gone. So, too, is Will Ferrell, who latched onto "Smart" shortly after his movie career took off. Ferrell opted to make "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy," "Kicking & Screaming" and "Bewitched" instead.

The casting of Steve Carell, an actor much more in line with physically and with the comic sensibilities of the late Don Adams, who played Smart on TV, was praised by fans.

Carell signed on to "Smart" in the summer of 2004, just as his career was beginning to take off, but still a year before "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" made him a star.

In the ensuing four years, the movie has suffered through threatened lawsuits, casting troubles, screenplay inertia and, in the weeks leading up to its opening, bad buzz.

And while "Smart" seems likely to be more successful than this weekend's other troubled, big-budget comedy - Mike Myers' "The Love Guru" - fans aren't exactly loving the treatment bestowed upon their beloved, iconic TV franchise.

"Everyone was looking forward to a great movie," says Carl Birkmeyer, who runs the exhaustive "Get Smart" fan site, WouldYouBelieve.com. "But instead of rejuvenating the property, it looks like this movie is going to kill it for good."

Birkmeyer says fan response toward the new movie has been 80 percent negative. Normally, he'd expect a backlash of about 60 percent because of loyalties to the original series and cast.

"Everyone was ecstatic when Steve Carell was hired," Birkmeyer says. "But that was a long time ago."

When Warner Bros. cast Carell, the studio hired "Bruce Almighty" writer Steve Koren to tailor the existing script (there were numerous versions) to Carell's comic strengths. The final screenplay is credited to the screenwriting team of Tom Astle and Matt Ember, TV sitcom vets who scored a hit with the big-screen romantic comedy "Failure to Launch."

The film's basic concept, though, belongs to Carell, dating back to his first meeting with Warner Bros.

"I wanted it to be a comedic version of the `Bourne' spy series," Carell told the Daily News last October. "You'd have villains that were scary and threatening, action that seemed real and not cartoonish, and characters put in a genuine sense of jeopardy. I wanted the reality of the peril to anchor the comedy."

Sure enough, the finished "Smart," directed by Adam Sandler pal Peter Segal ("The Longest Yard"), has countless action-movie beats with all the requisite explosions and car chases. The jokes lean heavily on bathroom humor, while the show was known for its wit and wordplay.

("Get Smart" twice won the Emmy for best comedy series.)

The filmmakers - who declined to comment for this story - did try to mollify people who remember the show, using many of Agent 86's catch phrases - "missed it by that much," "would you believe ..." - as well as references to the series' gadgets, cars and premise.

"Nobody could ever settle on a consistent approach," says a source close to the production. "So it was try a little bit of this, a little bit of that."

The result is a movie that Variety critic John Anderson noted "is neither fish nor fowl, not quite faithful to the show, but not quite bringing it into the 21st century either."

Anne Hathaway signed on after numerous other actresses passed on the role of Agent 99, Smart's female counterpart and love interest.

Terence Stamp plays the show's classic villain Siegfried, but is barely in the movie.

Making the villain "Siegfried" was apparently an afterthought anyway, according to a source. In early versions of the script, the character was just a generic bad guy.

"It's not unusual for a movie like this to go through a lot of writers," says a source who followed the screenplay process. "Working with Carell, they only had a window of opportunity because of his commitment to `The Office.' They finally just had to pull the trigger, go with what they had and hope for the best."

The show's creators, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, had no input during the creative process. Warner Bros. initially tried to deny them any financial participation. The legal dust-up was settled nearly a month after shooting began, prompted by a fan backlash over a report of Warner Bros.' balance-sheet maneuverings.

Brooks and Henry were eventually brought on board as "creative consultants."

Carell knows the movie won't please everyone. He's no stranger to fan backlash, having remade the original, U.K. version of "The Office."

"It's not a case of being better than the original," Carell says. "I have such respect for Don Adams and what he did. I can never be as good as he was. You just try to come up with a different approach and hope you can bring something fresh to the material."

Glenn Whipp, (818) 713-3672 glenn.whipp@dailynews.com

RELATED LINKS:

Review of 'Get Smart' (In theaters now!)