Production notes

Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures owned the rights to the television series of the same name, with Peter Segal attached as a director, after directing three of Adam Sandler's films. Prior to Segal's involvement, the project was in development for years with Jim Carrey, Martin Lawrence, and Will Ferrell attached at one point or another. According to Segal, he stated in an interview with AMC that he loved the show as a kid. Steve Carell was cast as the main character, Maxwell Smart and Anne Hathaway was cast as Agent 99. Segal and Carell talked about how they had already done "that kind of spoofy police comedy" as Segal directed The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult and Carell starred in the scrapped David Zucker pilot H.U.D., and decided to go in a different direction in terms of comedy tone.

Get Smart opened with $13.3 million on its opening day, and grossed over $38.6 million on its opening weekend in 3,911 theaters, ranking #1 for the weekend of June 20-22. The opening averaged $9,891 per venue. It scored the fifth-highest opening weekend for a film based on a television series at the time. The film later earned $20.2 million on its second weekend and dropped to #3 behind new releases WALL-E and Wanted. In the United Kingdom, the film opened at #3 behind Hellboy II: The Golden Army and Mamma Mia!. At the end of its box office run, Get Smart recouped its production budget of $80 million as it grossed $130.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $100.3 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $230.6 million. It is the 27th highest-grossing film of 2008 worldwide, and the 19th highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada of 2008.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Get Smart has a 51% rating based on 223 reviews with an average rating of 5.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads "Get Smart rides Steve Carell's considerable charm for a few laughs, but ultimately proves to be a rather ordinary action comedy". Metacritic gave the film a score of 54 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale. The film received positive reviews from Roger Ebert and Lisa Schwarzbaum from Entertainment Weekly. Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times also gave the film a thumbs up, saying that it was "one of the more pleasant surprises of the year". Critic James Berardinelli also gave it a positive review. Negative responses came from Glenn Whipp of the Los Angeles Daily News calling it "staggeringly bad" and Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle stating that "It couldn't buy a laugh in a nitrous oxide factory with a fistful of clown noses." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said "it neglects the laughs and amps up the action, resulting in a not very funny comedy joined at the hip to a not very exciting spy movie." It also received negative reviews from Richard Schickel from Time and David Ansen from Newsweek, with the latter stating, "it's not Maxwell who's clueless, but the filmmakers ... Director (Pete) Segal ... is a comedy specialist lacking any apparent sense of humor."