Mr. and Mrs. Smith

I've been reading critics who panned this movie, and of course I've seen much better, but I found that the audience in the 2/3 full theatre where I saw it laughed and groaned appropriately and showed other signs of enjoyment.

I, too, enjoyed it to my own surprise.

In a nutshell, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie meet and get married without knowing that they are both high-end assassins. How they hide this fact from each other is something you don't want to think about because then you'll be distracted by questions like these: How did Brad get that secret room with all of his weapons in it installed under the floor of the garage without Angelina knowing about it, and how did she get that secret weapon drawer in the kitchen installed without him knowing about it?

They've been married "six or seven years" (which in itself is a gag in the movie) and we find out toward the end of the movie that despite the fact that she frequently puts up delicious looking dinners, she just reheats ready-to-heat food. And he has never caught on?

If you have the idea this is primarily a thriller about paid assassins, you'd be wrong. Like The War of the Roses (a much better movie), this one is really about a marriage. On a deeper level, it's about marriage itself, which is the real reason the audience enjoyed it so much. Some of the most enjoyable scenes involve the couple in a marriage counseling situation.

Like many movies in the spy/thriller genre, this film paradoxically begins to drag just when the final action begins. The ending is a mostly positive one designed to please mass audiences with plenty of female in them, but I think Hollywood underestimates the Tender Gender. After all, The War of the Roses and Thelma and Louise had dark endings and are beloved of women. It's too bad that director Doug Liman lacked the balls to go dark.