• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 1, 2024

Who can forget 2005’s “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” the spy caper movie starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt?

Well, I can’t forget it, and I didn’t even see it. I can only imagine what fans of the movie will think of Prime Video’s new series adaptation of the movie starting Friday.

For others like me who never got around to watching it, the movie was nevertheless memorable for the off-screen capers of its two co-stars, who fell in love and had an affair while filming it, and voila!, out jumped a new pop culture portmanteau, Brangelina. 

Only problem was: Brad was married at the time to America’s sweetheart and best “Friend,” Jennifer Aniston. How can a TV show of the same title, but with two non-household-name co-stars top that?

With little to go on, except for all the other spy movies and TV shows styled as swashbuckling romcoms that have come and gone, a comparison to the Brangelina movie is not possible, at least for me.

This time, Mr. John Smith and Mrs. Jane Smith are played by Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. 

The Smith names are pseudonyms. They have each been mysteriously plucked from their real-world lives to take up “jobs” as secret agents. 

They are not only secret agents masquerading as a married couple, but they have, in fact, become legally married in order to extend and enhance the ruse.

Before you can say “True Lies,” the two are moved into a Manhattan townhouse with all the trimmings, where they will reside together as a married couple occupying different bedrooms with en suite bathrooms.

After the first episode concludes, questions remain about who exactly they are working for. In fact, it is a mystery to them too.

In Episode One, they themselves ask the same question, which indicates they each took up their new jobs without having any idea who was hiring them. Maybe the money was irresistible, but how much they are being paid was not brought up.

In the premiere, we see their first mission, which results in substantial carnage that may have even included innocent bystanders.

And yet, after they return to the mansion, they have nothing to say such as expressions of regret about the murders they just committed. Instead, they just agree that they are each tired, and then they go to sleep. Aww.

These male-female “buddy” spy movies and TV shows are customarily known for a certain sparkling repartee as the heroine-heroes get to know each other. Cue the sexual tension.

But in “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” the TV show, the repartee has no such sparkle. So far, it is Mr. Smith who is doing all the heavy lifting on the seduction space, and truth be told, he is hardly trying and she ain’t biting.

One of the problems is, at least in Episode One, the characters appear to have no chemistry whatsoever.

Despite that, the smart money is on her biting eventually -- figuratively, if not literally -- because if she didn’t, what would be the point of the whole thing? 

“Mr. and Mrs. Smith” starts streaming on Friday, February 2, on Prime Video.