by MATTHEW HAYS

Forget the dreary backstory of their romance (the one that saturates People and US magazines), the real test should be how Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie hold up onscreen in their first feature together.

By any educated guess, Mr. & Mrs. Smith should stink to high heaven. This sort of vapid summertime star vehicle, after all, is just the kind of thing Hollywood studios screw up so epically and consistently. But—surprise, surprise—it doesn’t. In fact, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is outright fun at its best—silly, charming on its own dim terms and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.

The premise is as simple as it is outlandish: Pitt and Jolie are both killers for hire, working for mysterious underground organizations that knock off various corporate and espionage types for huge fees. They both pose as normal, ordinary suburban types who live boring lives in an ordinary suburban house. The film’s central conceit is that neither knows that the other is employed as a killer; when they are given assignments that put them in conflict, the two find out about the other’s secret life, putting them at odds.

Jolie and Pitt are wondrous to look at, a true bisexual’s dilemma. They exchange witty barbs and dirty looks in between explosions too numerous to count. Screenwriter Simon Kinberg and director Doug Liman (Go) have artfully merged the action movie with the romantic comedy, making for a delightful fusion. (Not surprisingly, Kinberg cites Hong Kong movies as a major source of inspiration.)

But aside from being a more-than-serviceable summer movie (with air conditioning! And popcorn!), on occasion Mr. & Mrs. Smith rises to very savvy territory. Pitt and Jolie’s one-liners poke fun at all the clichés of troubled-marriage movies. And there is one standout scene in which Jolie, when handed an infant at a party, stares at it in 30-something angst about the threat of possible parenthood.

But those are just the odd moments—mostly, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is precisely what we want in a summer yarn: good, crazy, sexy, exploding fun.

Mr. & Mrs. Smith opens Friday, June 10

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