Mr. And Mrs. Smith Review: Reinvented Spies, Insufferable Relationship
- The on-screen talent is top-notch
- Mr. and Mrs. Smith's relationship is puzzling, at best
- The cases of the week pull the focus from the central romance
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a well-known and well-liked movie starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. So it's no wonder that it's now a TV show starring the less well-known Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. The TV version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is another in a long line of reimaginings and rehashes of old movies and shows. Sometimes, this can be a successful format. For example, the recent "Reacher" television series took the "Jack Reacher" movies and books and redesigned them for modern audiences. But more and more, these remakes have become an excuse to attach a known name to a property and hope it succeeds on the basis of star power and IP recognition. That's what "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" does, and it's a shame.
The movie version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" tells the tale of a tired married couple who discover they're assassins for rival agencies. This not only puts the pep back in their marriage, but it also causes them to recommit to one another when their agencies call in assassins to take them both out. The TV version is the exact opposite of that. John (Glover) and Jane (Erskine) are brought together by a spy agency that wants them to pose as a married couple and run missions for them. They're to cut off all contact with anyone from their previous lives and embrace their new roles with the aliases they've been given.
Thus begins the saga of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." While the first episode is intriguing in the way it establishes the pair as individuals and as a couple, that interest quickly fades away and leaves behind a series of mostly case-of-the-week stories that continue to rehash the troubles the pair are having in the same ways. It's a slog, and we're left wondering what the people who made this could possibly have been thinking.
A familiar team
The thing is, many of the producers and directors who made this series are the same ones responsible for ushering the TV show "Atlanta" to the screen. While that show is great — it's quirky, weird, and inventive — "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" is a much more conventional series, and perhaps that's why this team isn't able to work their magic on this property the same way they did for "Atlanta."
Of course, there's also the mystery of what happened with Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Waller-Bridge was originally Donald Glover's partner on "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" and would have been the Jane to his John, but she departed in 2021, citing creative differences. It's hard not to wonder what could have been with her as part of the creative team. Would the show have been more interesting? We'll never know, but we can say for sure that it's not that interesting without her.
That isn't due to a lack of on-screen talent. Both Glover and Maya Erskine are fantastic in their roles. They're great at selling the spy stuff and at playing each phase of their relationship. Perhaps they're too good at it, because the scripts can be contradictory, but you always believe what they're doing. The guest stars are fantastic too. Everyone from Alexander Skarsgård to Sharon Horgan, from Ron Perlman to John Turturro shows up here. Each episode has at least one (often more) really famous guest star, and they're all wonderful, even when their roles are very different from the ones they usually play. The trouble is not the on-screen talent but rather the way the show's eight episodes are laid out.
Eight episodes of relationship highs and (especially) lows
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" takes place over an unknown length of time. In that time, we see the duo try to stay away from one another, fall hard and fast in love, have troubles, go to therapy, and eventually break up. It's definitely a unique way to examine a modern relationship, but it rushes the lovey-dovey phase of their romance and sacrifices a lot to the case-of-the-week formula, where they spend just as much time with their targets as with each other.
Moreover, it's hard to understand why they end up in a relationship at all. Sure, the movie had a romance at its center, but the TV show is a very different beast. Instead of falling in love from the start, they swear to keep things platonic. That is, until the end of the second episode, when the adrenaline gets to be too much and they end up falling into bed together. By the next episode, they're in love. And by the fifth episode, they're quarreling over big relationship issues. But the thing is, they could have just had sex for fun. They didn't have to fall into a relationship ... at least not so quickly.
The most interesting episodes happen in the latter half of the season, but by then, we don't really care about the pair or their relationship. By the time Jane is angry with John for cheating on her with a mark in the seventh episode, it's hard not to wonder why the pair are staying in this relationship. It would be one thing if the relationship unfolded organically, but we keep getting pulled in at different points, so we don't even know how much time has passed. What we do know is that John and Jane seem to have the same fights at every point in their relationship, and it's tedious to watch.
The series offers pops of humor, but "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" as a whole just doesn't work. It's amazing the talent it attracted, presumably on the basis of Donald Glover's track record alone, but this show isn't another "Atlanta." Instead, it's an action-spy rom-com that isn't particularly successful or stirring. It's a shame that with the on-screen talent involved, the one thing these actors can't make you do is care.
"Mr. and Mrs. Smith" premieres on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, February 2.