Viking Night: Mystery Men
By Bruce Hall
September 10, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The problem is that it’s damn near impossible to tell where this movie is coming from. Mystery Men evokes a campy, self-referential vibe where wisecracking, brightly-costumed vigilantes and villains really do exist and are an accepted part of society. The initial tone is a heavy nod toward the simplistic, cornball stuff you might have found in a 1930s pulp comic, and the movie's visual design leans that way as well. Champion City, as it's called, is a visual mash-up of depression era New York and Blade Runner's near future, dystopian hell. And the sworn protector of this bustling metropolis is not Superman, but a relatively fit, middle aged white guy who walks around in a superbike suit and calls himself "Captain Amazing" (Greg Kinnear).
But the Captain isn't the guy in town who likes to dress up in a ridiculous rubber suit and get into fights with people in equally ridiculous rubber suits. Inspired by His Amazingness, a team of enterprising lunatics has taken to the streets to fork out a little justice of their own. Blue Raja (Hank Azaria) literally fights with forks, The Shoveler (William H Macy) is basically A Guy With a Shovel, and Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller) is an ADHD afflicted nitwit with massive impulse control problems. As the movie opens, they've taken on a gang of thieves who call themselves the Red Eyes, because they wear red steampunk goggles and, presumably, always travel economically. The fight goes poorly until Captain Amazing shows up with his PR manager and punches everyone in the face before posing for pictures. The man is a smug media whore who's more interested in corporate endorsements than he is in helping people, and he's none too impressed with the new competition.
Unfortunately, the Captain has done too good a job cleaning up Champion City. There's not much left for him to do, which means fewer commercials and interviews. And while you'd think a superhero's greatest dream would be to work himself out of a job, you'd be wrong. The city's savior concocts a not very well thought out plan to release his greatest nemesis from prison, so they can duke it out for the cameras once again. Of course, the very awesomely named Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) has other ideas, and doesn't exactly hold up his end of the bargain. Suddenly, with Captain Amazing MIA, evil is again on the rise. And the police are defenseless, because this is the kind of universe where the cops can't arrest anyone until some dork in red underpants tells them to. Champion City's last line of defense is gone...or is it?
This would be the part where the three zeroes I mentioned earlier decide to become heroes, and start recruiting team members to take on Casanova and rescue the Captain. They come up with a kid who says he can turn invisible, but not really (Kel Mitchell), a guy called The Spleen (Paul Reubens) whose power (har har) is farting (even though the spleen is not involved in the farting process), and a girl who uses her father’s skull as a bowling ball/melee weapon (Janeane Garofalo). If you were still in middle school or worked for Universal at the time, I'm sure this all looked hilarious on paper. After Joel Schumacher and his Bat-Nipples almost single handedly destroyed the genre, it must have seemed like genius to adapt a snarky, contemptuous underground comic into $70 million worth of big screen irony.
But the problem is, I'm not completely sure that's what Mystery Men is trying to do. It's obviously not a serious story, but it's hard to guess in what context you're supposed to take any of this. At first, all the "heroes" and "villains" appear to be just ordinary people in crazy outfits, none of whom really know how to fight or have any particular abilities at all. So, that's the joke, that Champion City worships heroes who are in no way heroic? Is the movie making fun of its audience by proxy? Is this just two hours of cynical cosplay about how stupid it is to even believe in heroes? Is this a story about how what makes you a hero comes from within you and not from what people think about you? Is this a love story about Mr. Furious?
It's hard to tell because at various points the story tries all of these things, in no particular order, and none of them really work.
And then partway through the film it turns out that some of these people DO have powers...kind of...and...access to over the top comic book technology. Suddenly, we're in a completely different world than the one the movie spent the first 30 minutes setting up. So really, what kind of movie IS this? It isn't a genre send up, it isn't ironic commentary, and it isn't even good satire. It’s not even a “mess” - it’s a 55 gallon drum of used diapers and menthol cigarette butts, and I am nowhere near imaginative enough to come up with a one word description for that. Everything about this movie is so unorganized and disdainful - it hates its characters, good and bad. It hates the world they live in. It hates comic books, and it hates YOU if you ever liked them. And even if you don't, it still thinks you suck because you were stupid enough to watch.
And worst of all, it has no idea what it wants to say, only that it’s in a bad mood about saying it. Mystery Men is the kind of indifferent slop your boring, unimaginative dad would have come up with based on what he was able to learn by glancing at the covers as he chucked all your comics in the trash. Throw in a half-hearted love story, some bullshit about believing in yourself, maybe trick a prominent Native American actor into making fun of his own people, and you've got yourself one of the most confusing and mean spirited comedies of the 1990s. Not only is it unfunny, but I can’t even figure out what was supposed to BE funny about it - and next to that whole diapers-and-cigarettes thing, that’s just about the worst thing you can say about any comedy.