Review of Mystery Men (1999) by Luxo J — 04 Jun 2010

When Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear), Champion City's legendary superhero, falls into the hands of the evil madman Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) and his disco-dancing henchmen, there's suddenly a chance for the try-hard superheros to show what they can do. They're the Mystery Men a ragtag team of superhero wannabes featuring: Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), whose power comes from his boundless rage; The Shoveler (William H. Macy), a father who shovels "better than anyone"; The Blue Raja (Hank Azaria), a fork-flinging mama's boy; The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), who fights crime with the help of her father's skull; The Spleen (Paul Reubens), whose power is pure flatulence; Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell), who's only invisible when no one's watching and the Sphinx (Wes Studi), a cliché-spewing philosopher.

It's not the usual sort of superhero movie, so it's got a fairly original story line. It's actually got pretty good performances, the two best ones are Ben Stiller, who plays the most try-hard of them all, and Geoffrey Rush, who plays the villain very well, he can do basically anything. But every other actor is great in this as well, there are a lot to list. While it's not incredibly laugh out loud funny, it drags on a little bit and it can be a bit cheesy, it's enjoyable. The people who made this obviously had fun with it.