Mystery, Alaska 1 Star (Out of 4) Reviewed by Mac VerStandig critic@moviereviews.org http://www.moviereviews.org October, 1999
Unfortunately, there is little mystery in this film. Following in the footsteps of Rocky; Hoosiers; Rudy; The Mighty Ducks; and on and on, Mystery, Alaska is yet another underdog sports movie where the audience is made to wait over an hour for an inevitable final match that will surely come down to the last seconds. This film will likely be buried quickly in the always hectic fall film season.
With a population of just under 700, the town of Mystery, Alaska is small, homely and most everyone knows everyone; the biggest threat is the invasion of a mega-store and its potential harm to the status quo of their economy.
Once a week, the town gathers around a frozen pond for a near-religious experience: The Saturday Hockey Game. The players are selected by a special committee and are the pride of Mystery. The matches are always friendly as the pool of athletes is randomly divided into teams just before game time.
Charles Danner (Hank Azaria), a Mystery native, has left the town and is now working in New York with a television station. He remembers the old town games and thinks, just as Kevin Bacon thought in The Air Up There, that these local players might be on par with the multimillionaire athletes seen every weekend on television. He writes a feel-good article for a popular magazine and soon after returns to Mystery with the promise of an exhibition game, against the New York Rangers, to be broadcast for the whole world to see. To Charles it is a fluff piece that will make him money, to the Rangers it is a joke and waste of time, to Mystery it is a game for pride - the pride of knowing that their boys are just as good as any others.
The makers of Mystery, Alaska learned a lesson from Fargo: No matter how snowy and accent-heavy your setting, a complementary side plot is still necessary. In this case sexual relationships are the added oomph. Although premature ejaculations; teenage soap-opera relationships; adultery with a friend of the spouse and old crushes revisited are far from uncharted territory, they are portrayed here in a surprisingly bold manner for a sports film.
The production skates dangerously close to the realm of melodrama. One of the low points comes mid-film and pits the town of Mystery, in court, with the National Hockey League Players Union. The issue is whether or not the Rangers will be forced to play in the game all the way across the country during one of their much-valued breaks. Aside from having an obvious outcome, if there is no game, there is no movie, this section is particularly pathetic because two of Hollywood's last resort dramatic elements are used: a court scene and a key character's death.
There are three funny roles in Mystery, Alaska: Mike Myers, Beth Littleford and Michael McKean. Myers has a cameo, McKean has two scenes and Littleford isn't exactly a prominent character. Other than those, there is not much good about this film; the drama is weak and the payoff is predictable. Maybe the Rangers had the right idea in trying to stay home.
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