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Expect the unexpected
by Eric Lanyard
Mystery Men is so adorable a movie, you just want to
reach up to the screen and pinch the cheeks of
everyone involved. It's such a little charmer that
you find yourself rooting not only for the good guys,
but for the movie itself. The script's sweet goofiness
and its incredibly gifted comic cast more than
compensate for the sometimes clumsy direction of
feature first-timer Kina Usher (if Steven Spielberg
had directed this film, it would have been the biggest
hit of the year) and for special effects that are
pretty darn primitive in this summer of decomposing
mummies, giant mechanical tarantulas, and that
annoying but technically impressive Jar Jar Binks.
It helps that the movie is based on such a winning
premise-- a rag-tag group of wannabe superheroes get
their big chance to shine when the evil Casanova
Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush, having a lot of fun)
kidnaps the reigning champion of good, Captain Amazing
(the perfectly cast Greg Kinnear). What helps even
more are the players, all of whom manage to bring a
real warmth and dimension to some really silly
characters. Ben Stiller is outstanding-- you can have
your Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, and Mike Myers, it's
Stiller who gets my vote for the top comedian in
movies today. He plays Mr. Furious, whose
super-ability is basically just a big ol' temper
tantrum, and who seems chiefly inspired by the little
dog Stiller battled in There's Something About Mary.
But Stiller infuses Mr. Furious with a little boy's
machismo, a defensive tough guy routine that is
responsible for not only many of the film's laughs but
also for a lot of its heart as well. (All this in
spite of the fact that he's stuck with Meet Joe
Black's lame Claire Forlani as a love interest. I once
read a cruel statement that Judd Nelson acted only
with his nostrils. I think that's grossly unfair, but
along those lines, Forlani's entire arsenal of
expression seems to be wincing!). Everyone is going to
have their favorites among the rest of the cast.
Janeane Garofalo as The Bowler gives a crowd-pleasing
performance but it's really just her usual Garofalo
shtick. My personal favorites were William H. Macy as
the Shoveler, a simpleminded man who quietly believes
in his own heroic abilities in spite of his less than
supportive wife, and the sweet Kel Mitchell as
Invisible Boy-- who can only turn invisible when no
one else is looking. At a key point in the story,
when the Mystery Men must depend on Invisible Boy's
particular abilities to confront Casanova, Mitchell's
quiet resolve in the face of danger is truly touching.
The script offers both lowbrow humor (centering mostly
on the Artist Formerly Known as Pee Wee-- Paul
Reubens-- whose character The Spleen is a
gastrointestinally gifted hero) and sharp satire
(Captain Amazing wears product endorsements for Pepsi
and Jiffy Lube on his superhero uniform; a weapons
expert repeatedly emphasizes the fact that his
products are all non-lethal, as if to appease any
Congressman in the theater audience), but most
importantly, it's almost always funny. In true
Hollywood style, the last quarter of the film tries to
be "big" and "action-packed", and some of the
contagious giddiness that carries the film a long,
long way gets sacrificed as a result. The Mystery
Men's final act to save the day is a clumsily staged
attempt to include the entire team in the resolution
of their adventure, but since the message is "It takes
teamwork!", you've got to forgive it.
Like the oddball superteam themselves, Mystery Men is
an underdog this summer. It's gotten nowhere near the
hype of this season's cinematic equivalents of Captain
Amazing-- The Phantom Menace, Wild Wild West, or Eyes
Wide Shut. But it's far better than any of those
films, and hopefully, just like its underappreciated
protagonists, it will get its chance to shine.
Eric Lanyard, 1999
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