Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a culturally significant story when the movie dropped in 2005, but we have since moved away from it—that is until Prime Video brought it back to us with Donald Glover and Maya Erskine at the heart of it.
The new series, from co-creators Glover and Francesca Sloane, is a reimagining of the 2005 movie that starred Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as Jane and John Smith, secret agents who meet and fall in love until they become each other’s targets. Where the series differs is having Jane and John put together by their agency, forcing them into a “fake” marriage.
And who doesn’t love a fake marriage plot? Set mainly in New York, the series shows how John (Glover) and Jane (Erskine) grow together as they’re forced to play house, and it makes the original premise we fell in love with in the Doug Liman-directed film that much sweeter.
Whether it’s the show’s ability to draw out their relationship or Glover and Erskine’s chemistry, I don’t know, but I became instantly invested in how John and Jane interact with each other more than I ever did with the film. Or maybe it is just that this story can thrive when we update it for a new audience because there is so much to love in the Prime Video series.
It still has all the action-packed thrills that you expect from a story like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but the length of the series allows us to live in the relationship between John and Jane in a way that makes their connection even stronger, especially in the midst of their case work.
Action-packed, sexy, and fun
Whether it’s relationship squabbles in the middle of a shootout or trying to get answers while pretending to be on vacation together, the show really lets the relationship of John and Jane shine in the midst of all the action they’re facing. They are far from a perfect couple, and to see them killing people and doing whatever their mission asks of them and then ending the day with a very cutesy couple scene is what makes Mr. and Mrs. Smith so charming.
The reason that the show works is that it takes the mission elements seriously. If we didn’t believe that these two wanted to be spies, their fake relationship setup wouldn’t work. But what Glover and Sloane did with this story was take all the elements we loved about the film and make this take that much sweeter.
But through it all, it comes back to the chemistry between Erskine and Glover. When they’re talking about cartoons or making jokes about farting, we care about this couple and how real they come across. Not that the movie didn’t have those elements, but it didn’t feel this real, and watching an actual couple go through spy activities and still have their bickering fights has made Mr. and Mrs. Smith a must-see!
(featured image: Prime Video)
