Instantly forgettable, extremely enjoyable

Mr And Mrs Smith review

Rated - 4.0 stars

By Tim Turner from Manchester Avatar image

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11th June 2005

No-one will win any Oscars for this one, and I'll probably have forgotten about this movie in a week. But while it's on, 'Mr and Mrs Smith' is a cracking piece of entertainment. We went to see it on the basis that Doug Liman had made three good pictures ('Swingers', 'Go' and 'The Bourne Identity') and the two stars are usually good value for money. The logic is sound. If you don't like Pitt's excitable boyish persona and Jolie's smouldering, slightly perverse image, you won't like this film. Virtually plotless, with one-liners instead of proper dialogue and built around a succession of effective set pieces, the film is built on the enormous charisma of the two stars, and that turns out to be more than enough. There are a few real surprises (like the ferocity of the Smith's fight with each other halfway through), some genuinely hilarious moments (listen carefully for the joke about 'Fantasy Island'), and it moves along at a cracking pace without ever really drawing breath. It's no classic, but who cares, the film's job is to entertain and it does that perfectly well.