With Get Smart opening this weekend, stars Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway sat down with MovieWeb to discuss the comedy. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Did you guys watch the original TV show before diving head first into this endeavor?
Steve Carell: I steered clear of it. I didn’t want to do an impression of Don Adams. I figured there was no way to improve upon what he had done. I thought the more I watched him, the more I would be inclined to do an impersonation. He was so good and so definitive in that role. I sort of backed away from it.

Anne Hathaway: I actually grew up watching the show on “Nick at Nite”. I used to love it, so it was really fun to revisit that. I was one of the last people cast, so I missed the whole collaboration of it. The: “This is the movie we’re making” part of it. I wanted to make sure that I understood what tone we were trying to achieve. I think we’ve managed to have that silly, sweet, yet sophisticated feel that the original series had.

Get Smart opens on June 20.

As an adaption of a sitcom that a majority of its target audience was not alive for, Get Smart faces a challenge. Basically, it better be damn funny in order to attract viewers.

Does the Steve Carell vehicle succeed in this mission? Let’s see what a handful of critics have to say about it…

- Although its chemistry never gels, Get Smart pulls off a sufficient number of goofy action set pieces to earn its entertainment value… — Cole Smithey

- A lot of the comedy seems to have been lost in the translation… — Variety

- This is a slap-dash effort whose producers threw money and stunts onscreen instead of the satirical gags and one-liners that made the old spy spoof so memorable… — Hollywood Reporter

- In this distressingly generic spy spoof, it’s not Maxwell who’s clueless, but the filmmakers… — Newsweek

Dwayne Johnson has officially moved on from his life as The Rock.

The former WWE star now goes by his real name, and it’s certainly been working out well on the big screen for him. He’ll star alongside Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway in Get Smart, hitting theaters on June 20.

Johnson recently spoke to MoviesOnline about his role as Agent 23.

MoviesOnline: For Get Smart, you’re the successful secret agent. To get into your mindset for this, did you think of James Bond?
Dwayne Johnson: A little bit. I thought of James Bond. I also thought, well, here’s a guy, a pretty successful guy at what he does and yet he has a dark side. For me, my process for all my movies is to just get really close with the director and just make sure we’re on the same page, we share the same vision for the movie, the same tone. And you know, it was a character I was excited to play. And physically, too.

When I first started thinking about the character, how all our characters came together, the thought of Steve Carell and myself side by side is just funny, and it made me laugh from the get go. And then it was funny on the page and I thought well, we had a pretty good shot of making a good movie. Or a funny movie.

MoviesOnline: What was it like kissing Steve Carell?
Dwayne Johnson: It was like, you ever have warm apple pie with cold ice cream too, and you find that balance where you’re oh, uhhh [laughter]. Um. Hey, you know, it was great, it was great. Not too many men can say that, have a nice big lip lock with Steve Carell. It was great. The length I go, the committed actor. Jack Gyllenhaal did it, Will Smith did it. I thought it was my turn to kiss a man.

Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway may be receiving the bulk of the attention for Get Smart - for humorous and beautiful reasons, respectively - but Dwayne Johnson also stars in the comedy.

Wrestling fans, of course, know Johnson better as The Rock, but his film career is taking off. Here’s a shot of him as Agent 23:

Click on the thumbnail pics below, meanwhile, for other images of Johnson in Get Smart:

Earlier this week, The Los Angeles Times interviewed Mel Brooks, the co-creator of Get Smart, about the upcoming Steve Carell comedy. The director had nothing but praise for the film’s star:

“It’s got a good director, Peter Segal. Wonderful director. The writers were great. The producers were young and aggressive and smart. But the brilliance is Steve Carell,” Brooks said. “To choose a guy who’s right in the Don Adams groove. You couldn’t get a better guy than Steve Carell. And yet he doesn’t do Don Adams. He does none of his delivery. He just does Steve Carell.”

Q: It seems like the premise is strong enough to have multiple interpretations of Maxwell Smart.
A: “It’s the earnest stupidity of organizations like the CIA. I would say honest and earnest stupidity. They want to do a good job. But they don’t hire enough [multicultural people]. They hire too many WASPs and they get too much white-bread thinking.”

Look for Get Smart in theaters on June 20.

The good people at ComingSoon.net went on the set of Get Smart recently.

They spoke to stars Steve Carell and Dwayne Johnson. Check out the full article now, and read below to get these actors’ takes on the project…

Carell talked about the honor of being offered such an iconic role:

“When Warner Bros. initially called me in, I thought I was coming in to audition. I heard that Will (Ferrell) had been attached. For some reason or another, he was no longer attached and that they were looking for somebody else,” he said.

“They just came out and said, ‘We’d like you to play Maxwell Smart.’ And it was one of those moments I could not believe, it was one of those quintessential life career moments that was like, ‘What the hell is happening? How did this come to pass?’ So I’ve been pinching myself ever since then. It’s great and it’s been ever since then,” Carell added.

Both he and Johnson, the former WWE star known as The Rock, were long time fans of the original series.

“I was a big fan, absolutely,” Johnson said. “I like any type of comedy that is physical, self-deprecating comedy. I love that because I think, if you are really trying to be cool, then it’s hard to be funny, like really funny.

The way Don Adams played that, very self-deprecating, giving himself up for the joke, I love that. And the gadgets were pretty cool too, which you see in this movie, updated ones, too.”

On June 20, movie goers will have a chance to Get Smart.

In the meantime, they can get themselves familiar with this Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway movie by checking out the following pair of pictures:

We were planning to see the Get Smart remake - starring Steve Carrel and Anne Hathaway - for the humor. But now we have another reason:

The quasi nudity!

Check out Hathaway, as the character Agent 99, in her underwear now. We knew the job of detective had more perks than movie critics…

Get Smart -  in all its funny, kind of naked glory - comes out on June 20.

In an audio interview with IESB.net, Steve Carell said that before he earned the the role of Maxwell Smart, both Jim Carrey and Will Ferrell were considered for the starring turn in Get Smart.

The Office star recalled going to Warner Brothers for a reading about three years ago:

“It was the most surreal moment, because I went in thinking I was just going to audition for a role. I didn’t expect them to offer me the part of Maxwell Smart.”

Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway star in Get Smart, bumbling its way into theaters on June 20, 2008.

Listen to the full interview now.

We’ve gotten our hands on the international movie trailer for Get Smart. The comedy remake of this classic sitcom stars Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway: