Mr. & Mrs. Smith

I fell victim to the marketing ploys of this show and was excited for this show to be released, watching most of the series the day it was released.

It is well made and had a good production value. Well shot and for the most part well acted. But I find the subject matter to be dull and the writing to be a bit lazy.

This is a spy show that is missing all of the quintessential "spy things" found in the genre. First off, the characters are basically Craigslist Kirkland-brand spies. They are not very good at their jobs and they are following the orders of a chat-GTP style entity. Also, the series is episodic, so they are in a new location doing a new task every episode. This is okay, but 90% of the episode is spent examining their relationship, while 10% is spent doing a few spy things.

All of the realism in this show is spent on relationship building. It's like a committee sat down and wrote a standard rom com using fights, quirks, and highlights from all of their previous relationships and packages them into a show. Needing a hook, they threw in a few lazily-written spy scenes to match it watchable.

I'm being a bit harsh here. The series is somewhat enjoyable and the relationship scenes are pretty well executed and well thought out. But if you are looking for an espionage/spy show with any sort of realism, this isn't it. This is a show about the fake marriage between two people that just happen to be spies.

You can tell Mr. & Mrs. Smith was created by Donald Glover because it has the same feel as Atlanta. They shouldn't have called this Mr. & Mrs. Smith though. I think that's why some people left negative reviews because it doesn't resemble the movie at all. I think the people who didn't like it would've liked it more if they called it something else because they went into it expecting the story to be along the same lines of the movie. It's not. It doesn't make it bad though. Both Donald Glover and Maya Erksine were fantastic in this. They have such natural chemistry. This show has plenty of drama, action, comedy, etc to keep you entertained.

I watched all 8 episodes and found them to have the same sentiment as the original movie but with a ton more depth. And also what I thought was better acting, Donald and Maya took every episode and put their full acting strength behind it to give each episode a familiar piece of life with some crazy action involved too. Some of the mid episodes definitely just felt like fillers and since we had the general plot going we didn't feel as we had to watch every second to get the gist. Now to the ending, DIDN'T LIKE, why with 8 full episodes would the series runners leave it on a cliffhanger... not appreciated and made me have mixed feelings toward the entire series. Boo.

I felt driven to provide a review after seeing the dumpster fire growing here. People seem to be expecting to see the Donald Glover they remember from Community, or some endless, action-packed rollercoaster that simply repeats the movie formula for a dozen hours.

Let this series be what it is, a spy dramedy, halfway between drama and comedy, just like a relationship, which is key to this show.

The opening sequence seems like a nod to the original, telling us that the Pitt/Jolie Smiths were taken out by other Smiths, after running for some unstated period of time.

Then we can learn about a new Mr and Mrs Smith, from recruitment to retirement, and watch their relationship grow, through the lens of international espionage. It's a fun concept that is well executed, if you can just let go of the fact that it isn't the same as the movie.

This series has nothing but the premise in common with 2005s mr and mrs smith. First of all the main lead while charming in his own right is no brad pitt, similarly the female lead no angelina jolie. The premise of the first movie was shallow, it was just 2 overly attractive film stars who were never seen together in a movie fawning over each other and displaying their sexiness, with some bad plot in the background. This movie actually explores the plot, two pretend married agents going on missions and step by step getting intimate. It is a blurry line they are traversing between the professional strictly lethal business and the attraction. It is complex,a very messy unconventional hands on movie i would very much like to compare to beef. You never know where the plot is going or how the relationship will develop. Its messiness does contribute to it losing focus, it is set up as a spy thriller but the dialogue is very much atlanta like, way more casual intertwined than any spy movie ive ever watched. This is however to its detriment sometimes because whilst the story, the progression are enjoyable due to the complexity it creates, you have a hard time buying either of the characters as stone cold killers they are supposed to be.

Still the dialogue is simply superb, the chemistry is there, the story is a thrill. You just need to remove the bradjelina glasses and enjoy the ride.