Relationships are hard. They take communication, honesty with yourself and your partner, long-lasting chemistry, and, most importantly, not shooting each other. That’s true in general, but it’s at the very core of Prime Video’s new series, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, starring Donald Glover and Maya Erskine. The show is based on the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie of the same name, and has a similar premise, but it’s anything but a retread.
In the 2005 film, John and Jane Smith are a married couple who are both, unbeknownst to one another, top-secret superspies. They’re bored in their marriage, because it’s really hard when two people are as legendarily gorgeous as they are. Things get wild when they discover their true identities, and we get everything you’d expect from a 2005 action movie, including tense dance scenes, Vince Vaughn looking like a mess and giving relationship advice, and an almost unwatchable trailer.
The meaningful similarities between the movie and new show really end at the phrase “married secret agents.” The two leads are aware from the very beginning that they are both agents. They’ve been hired by an unknown employer who greets them via a chat app with the phrase “hihi.” And so they call them Hihi. Together, the two take on high-risk missions together, doing things like extracting information, protecting high-value assets, bugging cell phones–you get the idea. The action is, in general, pretty grounded, and secondary to the action, with a few exceptions where the store brings it to the foreground.