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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.

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