Review: Mystery Men (1999)

Not many people will agree with me on this one, but I personally consider Mystery Men to be a masterpiece of the super hero genre.  Being made in 1999, it was a bit ahead of its time, however, and those that weren’t raised on comic books as a kid (like me) probably didn’t quite get most of what the movie had to say.  Sure, it was a comedy that was meant to be silly, but, similar to the better-received Zoolander, it was a long string of references to things that very few people knew about at the time.  Now that super heroes have taken the world by storm, Mystery Men may find a new audience.  Or at least I can always hope.

The story is pretty simple.  There’s a group of wanna-be super heroes prowling the streets looking for bad guys to fight.  Of course, they’re very B-list and can only take on the weakest of villains and even then they do miserably.  On the other side of things, in real-world super hero land, the powerful and heavily sponsored Captain Amazing has cleaned up the city so well that he now has no worthy opponents.  So, in an effort to renew interest in his amazing-ness, he has the villainous Casanova Frankenstein released from prison so that the two can have an epic showdown.

As the story goes on, poor Captain Amazing ends up being defeated and only the reject hero team is left to save him.  So they have some auditions, pick a few new people up and set out to be real heroes.  Bad stuff happens along the way and the heroes can’t seem to get their crap together, but along comes The Sphinx, a wise hero that can cut guns in half with his mind.  He trains them to work as a team and then they make their final stand against Casanova Frankenstein and his various groups of ridiculously themed cronies.

First and foremost, the cast of Mystery Men is absolutely amazing. Ben Stiller (back when he was still funny), William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Paul Reubens, Greg Kinnear, Geoffrey Rush, Eddie Izzard and Tom Waits lead the list.  Together, they create some funny and brilliant moments in the movie.  We get a look at what it’s like to be a super hero at the human level.  Most people have wanted to go out and fight crime in a mask and tight spandex at some point in their life (or is it just me?), and the Mystery Men represent mostly realistic individuals in unrealistic circumstances.  Captain Amazing, the only real super hero, has sold out; Mr. Furious accidently did something great once but now doubts his ability to do anything at all; The Blue Raja wants to be a star; and the Shoveler is doing it for his family and because it’s the right thing to do.

Though the writers and director of Mystery Men have nothing else worth mentioning on their resume (and indeed have been missing from the industry for many years), when they put together this movie they did so with a firm understanding of the comic book genre.  Even some of the bigger films out nowadays fail to latch onto that core essence, and that’s doing a serious drama/action flick.  That Mystery Men managed to do it with a comedy is even more impressive.  Rotten Tomatoes may put this as a miserable 61/50%, but to me Mystery Men will always be one of the early greats.

Photo Credits -           

Mystery Men courtesy of adherents.com