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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE NEW MR. & MRS. SMITH IS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE BRANGELINA FILM
 
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Eileen Jones
February 8, 2024
Jacobin [[link removed]]

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_ Loosely based on the 2005 film, the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith TV reboot
uses the action-comedy genre to represent how impossible life is for
so many people today, with two misfit unemployables turning to
assassin work out of desperation. _

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine in Mr. & Mrs. Smith. , (Amazon Prime)

 

The eight episodes of _Mr. & Mrs. Smith,_ the new Amazon Prime
remake of the 2005 Brad Pitt–Angelina Jolie hit movie, play at such
a slow tempo, it’s as if you’re watching an experimental attempt
to serialize an already-overlong indie art film and foist it on an
unwary public.

Whether you can endure what is essentially the injection of action and
comedy into something like Noah Baumbach’s _Marriage Story_ (2019)
might depend on how much you like the lead actors, Donald Glover and
Maya Erskine (_PEN15_), both of whom are versatile, compelling
performers. They play misfit unemployables who apply for jobs as
assassins and find that the hardest part of their dangerous new lives
as John and Jane Smith isn’t the body count — it’s having to
pretend to be married. The astonishingly good supporting cast helps
too — it’s an unexpected pleasure to see colorful appearances by
Paul Dano, Parker Posey, John Turturro, Alexander Skarsgård, Sharon
Horgan, Sarah Paulson, Ron Perlman, and other notable talents.

Created by actor-singer-writer-producer Glover and Francesca Sloane,
his fellow writer-producer on _Atlanta_, _Mr. & Mrs. Smith_ is
using the action-comedy genre as a way to represent how impossible
life is now for so many people, which is a pretty good idea. So we
recognize the dehumanizing process of the entirely computerized job
interviews our two lead characters go through separately — sitting
in a dark booth typing in anxious answers to more and more intrusive
questions and having to submit fingernail clippings in tiny plastic
bags to a small slot that opens up before them.

The new hires are told to cut all ties to their families and
significant others in order to take up their new lives. They do so
without hesitation and arrive at their suspiciously opulent new home,
where they find out, as part of their instruction packets, that
they’re pretending to live there as the married Smiths while they
await instructions for their first mission. Awkward! But on the other
hand, it’s wonderful to have income and housing and sudden social
status and all the other inducements to do whatever they’re told.

Clearly this is a very different narrative and tone from Doug
Liman’s _Mr. & Mrs. Smith_, which was a posh fantasy designed to be
a two-star vehicle about a gorgeous suburban married couple who are
bored and disaffected because each doesn’t know the other is
actually a slick, glamorous assassin — even though it was obvious
they both had to be slick, glamorous _somethings,_ because just look
at them.

This new version of _Mr. & Mrs. Smith_ features attractive leads who
can nevertheless be accepted as ordinary fuckups in a deeply
dysfunctional culture. In such an alienating environment, people feel
freakish even when they’re only a little offbeat. As the Smiths get
to know each other and become mutually attracted over the course of
several episodes, the rather uptight and controlling Jane reveals that
she’s considered to be a sociopath whereas John has interiorized a
sense of himself as hopelessly weak and incompetent. He feels deeply
ashamed of the fact that he loves his mother and, though it’s
forbidden by the assassination program, he’s maintaining contact
with her. Perfectly ordinary traits are pathologized, making John and
Jane’s terrible insecurities, both economic and emotional, a driving
factor in everything they do.

In one of the best episodes midway through the series, John and Jane
meet another pair of “Smiths” (Posey and Wagner Moura) also hired
as assassins and pretending to be married, but who then wound up in an
intense romantic relationship. But they’re much more experienced and
sophisticated and better paid. Soon the younger couple are currying
favor with the older, cooler, richer couple, desperate to be liked.
This involves a long night of bragging and expensive carousing and, in
the end, foolishly agreeing to go along on a “highest risk”
mission as a foursome.

It’s no surprise that one entire episode late in the series,
entitled “Therapy: Naked and Afraid,” will involve couples
counseling. The breakdown of John and Jane’s relationship, as both
romantic and work partners, and the way they’re racking up failed
missions without knowing what their employer will do to them if they
hit three failures, makes the series turn ever darker as it goes
along.

So at least the series is something a little different, a little
offbeat, like John and Jane. As for the cruelly slow pacing in some
episodes, that might really be evidence of widespread pathology in the
entertainment industry.

You’ve noticed it, haven’t you? So many films and television
series that are so much longer and slower than they used to be, right
up to the edge of what you can sanely tolerate? Makes you feel like
you’re part of some sort of malevolent social experiment by the
powers that be, right? What do you think it means for all of us
working Smiths out there?

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CONTRIBUTORS

Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of
the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.

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