League Of Stupid Heroes comes so close
Mystery Men A Film Review By Michael Redman Copyright 1999 By Michael Redman
**1/2 (out of ****)
Frustrations. I don't know about you, but they're some of my least favorite things. And there's so many of them. Lives that might have been. Opportunities lost. Delayed gratification.
In the context of this column, the most common frustration, and the most dreaded one, is a movie that almost makes it. Every element seems right, but they don't fit together. The whole is less than the sum of the parts. Filmmaking is an art, not a science, and sometimes the best laid plans just don't quite work.
Thus we have Mystery Men.
Based on a little known cult-favorite comic book by Bob Burden (also responsible for the equally cultish "Flaming Carrot"), the film is a spoof of super-hero antics. The mystery men are an unnamed group of farm league characters who don't quite get the idea.
Some of them have super powers -- The Spleen (Paul Reubens aka PeeWee Herman) can disable a foe from a distance with his deadly, err...gases -- and others merely think they do. The Invisible Boy's (Kel Mitchell) power is inspired. He is invisible only as long as no one is looking at him.
The team operates in Champion City, a cross between Gotham City and "Bladerunner", but no one takes them seriously. After all, the city already has a resident hero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear).
The good Captain has done such a good job of cleaning up crime that he has no foes left to fight. Since this has resulted in a decline in commercial endorsements, he arranges the release of his arch-enemy Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush). When Frankenstein captures Amazing in a nefarious scheme, the second-raters must come to the rescue.
The casting is wonderful. Hank Azaria is The Blue Raja who, clad in green, is an expert at throwing forks and scratching cars. Janeane Garofalo as The Bowler throws a mean strike with her transparent ball encasing her father's skull. Ben Stiller's power as The Furious is that he is uncontrollable when he gets angry. At least that's what he keeps saying. The list goes on.
The real stand-out is William H. Macy as The Shoveler. Using only a shovel as a weapon, he is the perfect gimmick super-hero. He's committed to his work and takes it seriously: Batman with a digging tool. Macy is perfect in the role. He completely captures the dedication of a crime fighter and is hilarious only because the concept is ludicrous.
This isn't so true with some of the others. Vastly talented Reubens is stuck in a goofy role and is unable to transcend it. Rush is more tedious than menacing. Tom Waits as a weapons designer could have been outrageous.
So many of the scenes are hilarious, it's difficult to understand why the film doesn't deliver more than it does. When the guys realize they need more firepower, they hold a barbecue tryout for more members. It's a wonderfully wacky bit.
The heroes refuse to believe that Captain Amazing's secret identity is millionaire Lance Hunt because Hunt wears glasses. How could he see without them? When confronted with a super-villain, they dent and scrape his limo. Their rescue of Amazing doesn't go exactly as planned with an appropriately ridiculous result.
But overall, the movie feels flat. There's too much of the same scene over and over. The Bowler's animated ball is entertaining the first time, but after that, it's repetition. The Spleen's farting is less amusing the more he does it.
In his first feature film, director Kinka Usher exhibits his commercial-making ("Got Milk?", Taco Bell) background as he introduces sub-plots and leaves them unexplored.
Some of the timing is off. The Furious' attempt at romancing a coffee shop waitress is so much wasted time. For such an over-the-top movie, some it is oddly subdued and could do with a bit more flamboyance. As the film draws to an end, it becomes too much like the movies it makes fun of.
"Mystery Men" is not a bad film. Some portions are marvelous and it's worth seeing just for those.
Like some frustrations in real life, this movie comes close. So close.
(Michael Redman has written this column for just about 24 years and is somewhat of a mystery to himself. Email your tales of frustration to Redman@indepen.com.)
[This appeared in the 8/12/99 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at Redman@indepen.com]
-- mailto:redman@indepen.com This week's film review: http://www.indepen.com/ Film reviews archive: http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman Y2K articles: http://www.indepen.com/
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