Mr. & Mrs. -- holy crap, Angelina is hot -- uh, Smith

Eti and I have both seen Mr. & Mrs. Smith in the past week. We didn't see it together, and as a result, no chatty teen lesbian couple materialized next to us as had happened when we attended Lords of Dogtown. Better flick this time, less proximity to girlish nookie. It's all part of God's plan, I suppose.

My team of crack research associates have informed me that the movie was originally planned as a Brad Pitt/Nicole Kidman vehicle. I'm not sure what our Hollywood betters were thinking, unless the script originally had a much darker ending in which either or both of them were killed. Because as we all know, Kidman is best suited to films where she is either dying or already dead. She's really, really good at that. To a preternatural extent; I mean, she doesn't even need any special makeup. (Shit, has anyone checked for a pulse lately?) But as a hot assassin who could kill your inhibitions with a look as she killed the rest of you with a bullet? Not so much.

Enter one Angelina Jolie. Despite her recent appearance on Inside the Actor's Studio (then again, who hasn't been on that), her body of work leaves something to be desired. Not her body of... body, though. Dubious achievement though it may be, she probably got about 100 times more people to sit through Tomb Raider than ever should have. In her all-too-brief appearance in Sky Crap-tain and the World of Boredom, she easily outshined Gwyneth "Screen Presence" Paltrow. And in some women's magazine poll, she was voted the #1 female celebrity that otherwise straight girls would want to sleep with. (Her response to the news was that she'd also be the most likely to sleep with them.) What's not to like? She just needed the right movie, and it sure as hell wasn't Taking Lives.

So is this finally the movie that would prove Angelina + not-completely-sucky script = unmitigated brilliance?

Well, here's the thing. No, Mr. & Mrs. Smith isn't the blisteringly hot, action-and-smoldering-glance-packed film that it was sold to us as (why'd it have to be PG-13 anyway?), but it does the job. There's enough action, intermittent laughter, and, yes, smoldering glances (plus a little bit of smoldering other stuff, but not nearly enough) to pretty much sustain a movie. There are gaps in believability. For example, in the very first scene, the couple admits they haven't done it in a while. Seriously? Would anyone of the opposite gender married to one of them really let the bed go cold for more than 20 minutes? I kinda doubt it. There's also the annoying Charlie's Angels-ish way that people are able to track down crucial, super-secret information with an average of four keystrokes or less. Yeah, I realize a movie like this isn't meant to be taken seriously. But once you stop taking it seriously, you stop caring about the characters, and that means there better be enough explosions and sex to hold your interest. Was there? Well, almost. Mostly explosions. And this movie does them very well and very frequently. Not all CGI-ish, either; it looks like they really blew shit up. Good car chase too, but that's no surprise since Doug Liman even pulled off a great one of those in Go on about one-ninetieth the budget.

It's only in the last twenty minutes that things kind of fall apart, because that's when you realize that there's nothing interesting left to happen. Either they're going to make it or they're not. And what do you think? Is this a Scandinavian black-and-white art house angstfest, or a $150 million summer movie from the talented writer of XXX: State of the Union? But you know what? It's still okay, because Angelina doesn't have one bad scene in the movie. There is no crappy line or plot point that she can't extinguish with her fiery Angelina-ness. That may not have been enough to save most of her other films, but it's just right for this one.

Oh, and Brad Pitt's a good looking guy and a good actor too, if you're into that sort of thing.