1999 Directed by Kinka Usher
When Champion City's hero Captain Amazing is kidnapped by the recently paroled supervillain Casanova Frankenstein, a trio of average, everyday superheroes -- Mr. Furious, the Shoveler and the Blue Raja -- assemble a new super team to save him.
Hank Azaria Janeane Garofalo William H. Macy Kel Mitchell Paul Reubens Ben Stiller Wes Studi Greg Kinnear Geoffrey Rush Lena Olin Eddie Izzard Artie Lange Pras Michel Claire Forlani Tom Waits Louise Lasser Ricky Jay Jenifer Lewis Ernie Lee Banks Gerry Becker Ned Bellamy Corbin Bleu Philip Bolden Jake Cross Emmy Laybourne Mason Lucero Monet Mazur Joel McCrary Christopher Mugglebee Show All…
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83
"You must lash out with every limb, like the octopus who plays the drums."
Absolutely preposterous, but incredible nonetheless. A two-hour Schumacher Batman riff that features caped crusaders such as 'The Shoveler' and 'Spleen'. Sublimely silly. I bet all of these actors keep evidence of Mystery Men locked away deep in their subconscious, but I cherish it. Filled to the brim with fart jokes and stupid slapstick and yet entirely more engaging than most superhero movies this decade. Shoutout to Tom Waits, master builder of non-lethal weapons.
This is the movie equivalent of going to McDonalds and filling your soda cup up with all the flavors. We called it a suicide but apparently that's a DC area thing and if you just casually talk about that your dull-witted friends from the Midwest get sad.
"Mystery Men" is a 1999 comedy focusing on a group of misfitted superheroes. The original source material came from independent comic book writer and artist Bob Burden with his breakthrough "Flaming Carrot" character. While the primary Flaming Carrot character is not featured, his side character team, which became an ensuing spin off series, the "Mystery Men", became the featured focused build that would lead to this film. The Mystery Men were always more superhero hopefuls rather than the actual application of superhero themselves. They resonated within the working class rung of society and focused their efforts on enacting justice on wrongdoers that also appeared to an embodied symbolism for the upper echelons of society in an independent comic brand of…
What I kinda imagined Terry Gilliam’s WATCHMEN was gonna be like when it was announced in the late 80’s, but cast with every cool actor on the indie Film circuit In the late 90’s.
SO many wide angle lenses.
This was a summer movie, too...the 90’s were gloriously nuts.
“JUNK IT!” Lady is the best casting.
obviously a ton of the humor from this 1999 comedy does not hold up HOWEVER the production design just absolutely rips and it’s so stupid and fun that if it came out today you freaks would be losing your MIND over it!!!! geoffrey rush doing something notably insane here.
janeane garafolo unconscionably hot in this but that’s sort of irrelevant to my review and more just a flashpoint in my sexuality as a 14 year old that i thought everyone should know about
We're not your classic heros. We're the other guys.
-The Shoveller
Mystery Men came out a good 15 years too early. A loose adaptation of an aspect of Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics, the property wasn't picked up for film because someone wanted to make a superhero parody but rather because it had the misfortune of being made during the tail end of the 90s superhero boom in films.
The 90s "boom" was easy to forget because it basically consisted of the success of the Tim Burton Batman films causing studios to attempt and pick up every "cheap" comic book property they could to get a "hit" while Marvel's characters were being put into incredibly cheap and horrible films.
This…
"We've got a blind date with destiny... and it looks like she's ordered the lobster."
Mystery Men, the only feature film from Kinka Usher (could that name beee anymore 90's...), is the kind of transgressive but bonkers big studio anti-superhero Joel Schumacher RiffTrax version of Batman whose comedy doesn't hold up well at all, and even at two hours in length and full of pretty much nothing but absurd slapstick and fart jokes every ten minutes or so, yet it's all still so damn engaging somehow. All the props for the balls out insane work Geoffrey Rush is doing here and that production design is primo baby.
Also, God bless any film that includes Tom Waits in its cast, especially as a builder of such non-lethal weapons as that of Tornado in a Can 🌪
it is funny to imagine william h macy being like “yeah I have two movies coming out this winter— mystery men and magnolia. enjoy!”
"You threw a spoon at the guy, Jeff."
Definite conflict of interest here, as I watched this movie approx. 800000000 times between the years 1999 and 2004, my brother and I both had it memorized thanks to a well-worn VHS copy. Watching it as an adult was an interesting experience, a unique blend of fun and embarrassment - befitting the weird mix of wit and dumb lowbrow laughs built into the comedy.
Unexpected MVP is Janeane Garofalo, whose rapport with a bowling ball is more entertaining and funny than that between any two Guardians of the Galaxy you might care to name.
Charming at the start, but the joke starts to run thin around 40 minutes in. It's a 2 hour movie. You do the math.
