by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
“Remake” can be a bit of a dirty word in Hollywood.
At times, it can seem like every other major project announcement is either a continuation or a refresh of previous intellectual property. However, there are certain IPs that are prime candidates for us to get a new spin on every generation or so. Mr. & Mrs. Smith is one such example. I mean, the base premise of a married couple being a pair of secret spies is ripe for good storytelling no matter how you spin it.
Coming out nearly two decades after the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie, Amazon Prime’s reboot series starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in the titular roles of John and Jane does a few really smart things.
First, I love the move to make this project a series. By giving things more room to breathe over the course of eight hours, it allows the audience to settle into the dynamic of the relationship and do a more wide-ranging exploration of the problems that might come up for a married couple in this line of work. Second, the relationship is tweaked for the better. Instead of setting them up as two spies who just happen to fall in love on separate assignments, here, the happy couple is placed together by the nebulous agency they both work for. Sure, the love at first sight thing worked because it’s Brad and Angelina, but trying to rebottle that particular spark was a losing proposition from the start. Third, for a minor distinction, the characters’ occupation is changed from “assassins” to “spies,” and that just allowed things to open things up a bit when it came to the missions.
All that serves to strengthen the do-or-die aspect of the project: our care for the not-so-technically married couple at its center. Glover and Erskine are each great individually, and they’re even better together. I really enjoyed their chemistry. It’s a different sort of chemistry to Brangelina, but again, you were never going to replicate that. Glover oozes charisma, while Erskine is a bit more introverted, but together they have a really fun dynamic. While Glover giving a great performance shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, having not watched Pen15,perhaps no one has caught my attention more over than last few months than Erskine (between this and her leading role in Blue Eye Samurai).We get to see their relationship start a little distant as they got to know each other, before it quickly settles into the married live dynamic — and I believed the pair of them at both points. The use of the job interview process as a framing device early on to show where they are aligned and where are differed as we get settled into the relationship is smart. It sets up both how they would connect and future friction points that popped up along the way. With the way the cold open is set up, we also get a little peek at how things might develop.
They’re also helped out by a fun cast of recognizable faces. Though not quite at Poker Facelevels, more often than not, you’ll find yourself doing the LeoPointing.GIF at the screen. Sarah Paulson as the therapist is by far my favorite. The way she plays the role of the enlightened world traveler trying to help out a couple when she’s missing a pretty key part of the puzzle is a lot of fun. Paul Dano as a nosy neighbor is a joy to watch whenever he’s on screen — or even when he’s just alluded to. Wait, I’m sorry, make that Hot Neighbor. Even John Turturro is fun as an eccentric billionaire, even if everything in that plot line didn’t work for me; he went hard and I respect that.
The way the series is structured helped me further connect with the relationship. Structured as sort of a mission of the week, each mission is used to explore a certain aspect of the relationship. One episode, an exploration of the honeymoon period ending. The next, the question of whether or not they want kids. What’s it like for them hosting coworkers? It’s a sort of mirroring tactic that works well, though there are certain episodes I didn’t jive with as well as the others. Episode Two, concerning the interrogation of a super-rich target, certainly goes for something that I didn’t always enjoy, and Episode Five, detailing their attempts to babysit a person for the company, didn’t have me quite as arrested as others. Though the aspect of their relationship they explore in that latter episode I still found interesting.
Episode Six is the perfect explanation of why the relationship work and the editing style are a great marriage. It cuts back and forth between missions and weekly marriage counseling sessions, with each session exploring issues that came up in a recent assignment. When the relationship is on the rocks is when there’s some of the best relationship work being done. In particular, there’s a camping scene that both allows for John to have an epic speech about their relationship, capped off by a simple but brutal retort from Jane. Plus, it’s fun to see them having to use euphemisms for their jobs and having to navigate talking through their issues with Paulson’s therapist using their cover as software engineers.
There’s one thing that really keeps me waffling on whether I’m camping myself in “loved it.” Pacing is a problem, and it’s the downside to going to the sort of mission-of-the-week style. We get snapshots into the couple’s lives periodically, and are given quick expositional lines that let us know that chunks of time have passed since we last saw them. While useful to clue the viewer in to where things sit, the result can sometimes be that the show makes jumps that I just couldn’t go with. Not to pick on Episode Five again, but there’s a wrinkle in the relationship between Jane and their employer that comes out of nowhere and isn’t earned. Though this issue decreases as we got into the final few episodes of the season.
With Glover and one of his Atlantacreative partners, Francesca Sloane, at the helm, it shouldn’t be a surprise that technically, for the most part, the show is strong. The writing is deeper than the “action comedy” label would have you believe on its face — every little detail comes back around. The music, obviously, is used to great effect. The show is very well shot — with one exception. I think people who come to this because of their fondness for the original film’s fun action will be disappointed. The action sequences can be fun and there are some standout moments, but it does occasionally fall victim to some of the worst modern tendencies where it gets chopped to bits and it can be hard to follow. To be fair to the show, that’s not really what it’s interested in. It’s much more interested in exploring the relationship.
When my eight-episode binge wrapped, though, my first overwhelming thought was, “That was so much fun.” Could I nitpick a couple of things, like how they’re openly talking about their work constantly in public, or how we get stormtrooper sightings when the narrative calls for it? Sure, but it’s a heightened reality that I thoroughly enjoyed. So, I really didn’t care that much. This is a perfect example of the types of projects that should get another crack: a fun but middling original with an intriguing base premise new creators can put a new spin on without immediately offending someone’s pop culture sensibilities.
I’m all for, giving someone new a chance at this story periodically, and I think this new iteration of an old tale comes off well.
Rating: Loved it
Mr. and Mrs. Smith is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video
You can read more from Jake Bourgeois, and follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd