Movie Monday - Mystery Men

Way back in the 1990s, when Dark Horse was just beginning to make a name for itself as a comics company, the main focus was media tie-ins. This meant heaps of books about Predator, Aliens, Terminator, Tomb Raider, as well as Star Wars. Of course, this worked both ways, and Dark Horse Entertainment was created to bring some of the comics properties to the big screen. The first (and most famous) of these was The Mask in 1994, but we just saw Jim Carey in Batman Forever, so we'll look at that another time. This time, we'll be focussing on the forgotten gem that is Mystery Men.



Director: Kinka Usher

Writer: Neil Cuthbert

Starring: Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Reubens, Greg Kinnear, Wes Studin, Kel Mitchell, Geoffrey Rush, Eddie Izzard, Tom Waits, Claire Forlani

Release: 1999

Champion City's resident, well, champion, Captain Amazing is bored. He's defeated all the good villains and is now reduced to stopping robberies at old folks' home mixers. His corporate sponsorships are drying up too. So he lights on a genius plan – arrange through his alter-ego (a wealthy lawyer) to have the diabolical genius Casanova Frankenstein released from prison. The plan is for them to form a mutually beneficial partnership but Casanova doesn't play ball and captures Amazing. Fortunately, he's not our hero.

Our heroes are three guys who want to be A-list superheroes – Mr. Furious, the Shoveller and the Blue Rajah. At the moment, they're not even C-list. They'd have to add some letters to the end of the alphabet to indicate how far down the list they are. But they've stumbled onto the fact that Casanova is free and has captured Amazing. So, in true heroic fashion, they form a team with some wannabe heroes and try to bust him out. With lots of arguing and mistakes aplenty. And even when they do succeed in something, they invariably fail. But they're the only hope that Champion City has (so it might be worth getting out of town).

This is definitely not a great film. It's only a good film in comparison to Batman and Robin – overall, it's an average film. That's not to say I don't love it. That cast! It's like a who's who of Gen X icons (never forget that Ben Stiller directed Reality Bites). And to get William H. Macy and Geoffrey Rush is fantastic. Hank Azaria is always a gem, likewise Janeane Garofalo. Unfortunately, this mass of comic talent may have been where the film fell down. According to rumour (which we should always trust), each cast member had a different idea of what the comic tone of the film should be – which meant constant arguing on set. It comes through in the film as well. Stiller's performance is remarkably different from Azaria's and Macy's deliveries are of a totally different style to Reubens'. That's not always a problem (it does give wider appeal), but since they're such different tones, what one person is appreciating another won't, and the actors can't play off each other. A wackier style gets dampened by a flat deadpan delivery. It makes the whole film feel like a mishmash.

Which, to be fair, it is. There wasn't actually a Mystery Men comic book – they were guest characters in another series. That meant that when creating the film, the entire thing became a pastiche of superheroes in general. There's a feel of 1920s pulp-noir, combined with steampunk and 1970s camp. Some of these are plot elements, some are not. The problem is that there is a feeling of schizophrenia (quite common in post-modernism) and it can be overwhelming for the audience. In this case, it's difficult to tell whether the characters were heroes who should be supported by the audiences, or if they were clowns to be mocked. There's no baseline comparison, no way of telling what the world 'should' be like. In a Hulk movie, the audience can identify with the feeling of peace and lack of massive destruction. We get why Banner just wants to find somewhere quiet and have a lie down, maybe drink some tea. Mystery Men doesn't have that – people can't relate to finishing your shift as a construction worker then going down to the local 1950s era diner but having to avoid an Al Capone lookalike having a running gun battle with a leisure-suited disco-obsessed mobster. Maybe if they lived in Gotham, they could, but not so much in our world. This was where the Schumacher Batman films failed as well – film audiences do not respond well to pastiches of superheroes without first clearly defining boundaries. Comic book audiences, on the other hand, lap that up.

I know I've been pointing out a lot of flaws (and will do so again, no doubt) but Mystery Men isn't a horrible film. Sure, it bombed at the box office. Sure, Smash Mouth stopped admitting to having written 'All-Star' for the soundtrack. Sure, the writing is haphazard and full of holes. Wait, I was supposed to be saying good things. There are some incredibly funny moments, brought about by that amazing cast. As a parody of everything superheroic, the film hits every target it aims for. Mr. Furious is a great mockery of the anti-hero so popular at the time. Captain Amazing is everything you'd assume a celebrity hero would be – a sell out (my god, if he'd played Booster Gold...). The Sphinx, the wise mystic is less spiritual and more empty axiom, just like every other superhero mantra. One problem with that is that it made the film ridiculous, and the late 1990s were serious business. Coming out a year after Batman and Robin didn't help either. Looking back now, Mystery Men is great example of what was wrong with the decade, especially in comics but unfortunately it wasn't quite able to pull it off.