Review of Mystery Men (1999) by Edith N — 28 Feb 2010

The Hammer of Not Bickering.

This is the single most quotable movie in the history of time. When Nathan Rabin wrote his column declaring it a Secret Success (cheers, Nathan!), even people who responded in the comments by disagreeing with him usually had a "well, except this one line." Some of the quotes can even be worked into conversation without sounding too forced--I will, on occasion, say, "Ah, dang!" the way Greg Kinnear did when his character, Captain Amazing, was drugged early in. On the other hand, there are whole lengthy exchanges which devotees of the movie can recite verbatim--the entire sequence starting with "Why am I balancing this tack hammer on my head?" being a prime example. ("I don't remember telling you to do that.") Because it's so obscure a movie, too, using the quotes is almost like a password into a secret society. "Dad, I'm going to my room with three strange men," said in just the right tone, will make you friends. And not that kind, either!

Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), Blue Raja (Hank Azaria), and the Shoveler (William H. Macy) are three wannabe superheroes in Champion City, which actually has a real hero, the abovementioned Captain Amazing. Only Captain Amazing has been so successful that there are really no villains left for him to fight. ("Death Man is dead.") In his real identity of Lance Hunt, he arranges to have supervillain Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) released from the insane asylum so that he can fight a real villain, but his problem is that Casanova is actually intelligent, whereas Captain Amazing is not. Casanova captures Captain Amazing, and Mr. Furious finds out about it. The trio end up recruiting further low-level heroes the Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell), the Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), the Spleen (Paul Reubens), and the Sphinx (Wes Studi). (It should be noted that only the Sphinx has an impressive power, and he only uses it once, spending the rest of the film being terribly mysterious.) At the same time, of course, they're trying to deal with their ordinary lives, and none of them are all that well adjusted to them.

Arguably, this is not a good movie. I will acknowledge that. Even we who love it acknowledge that it's uneven--the Spleen could be toned down or, for my money, left out entirely. Some of the jokes never entirely come together, though the deleted scenes indicate that they might have given another minute or two. I'm not sure its flashiness is really the best thing for its tone and theme. Geoffrey Rush is, as he does with this kind of movie, chewing so much scenery it's a wonder there are any walls left standing. (It strikes me that about half his career is based on choosing characters where he can, sometimes even fooling the Academy into nominating him over it.) Eddie Izzard is kind of wasted, though what there is for him is done well. Even if, when he says he's protected by the God of Hair Care, it sparks a reference to his act--"Simon, the God of Hairdos!" It seems to be parodying a genre without necessarily understanding the genre's conventions, and several of the characters (we're back to the Spleen, among others) are kind of one-joke bits that are let extend too long. (You can put the Invisible Boy in that category--he can only be invisible to himself--but he does add other things to the plot.) So yeah.

However, that also means that there's a lot to love. Yes, Geoffrey Rush is getting a healthy dose of fiber from that scenery, but there are also moments where it's clear that not even Casanova really understands what's going on or why. When he rolls his eyes at Mr. Furious, it's only what we've been doing throughout the movie. The scene with the superhero recruiting is generally acknowledged by Dane Cook haters to be the only funny thing he's ever done, perhaps because it's short. The whole thing about how Mr. Furious is apparently the only man in Champion City who's worked out that Lance Hunt is really Captain Amazing feels real. There are throwaway bits through the entire movie which have inevitably become someone's favourite part. It's also terribly easy to identify with Mr. Furious and how he's spending the entire movie trying to be cooler than just Roy, to the point that he can't admit to waitress Monica (Claire Forlani) that his name even is Roy. He wants to be that cool and just isn't.

One of the more grim aspects of this movie, and it's a spoiler, is the horrific death of Captain Amazing. I saw this movie in a theatre full of parents who didn't get the PG-13. It's a superhero movie--that means it's for kids, right? At the moment when the psycho-frakulator starts up, the theatre went silent, which it hadn't been thus far. (What do little kids care from disco?) I maintain that those kids' parents deserve all the nightmares their kids had over it, though the kids themselves didn't. Anyway, the great debate is really over whose fault that sequence of events was. We know it wasn't the Shoveler--he was all the way over there. And, of course, blaming Casanova Frankenstein is too easy. Just because he built the machine and strapped Captain Amazing into it and all. And, yeah, Mr. Furious and the Bowler and Blue Raja screwed up pretty mightily. In the end, they were the ones flipping the toggles. They were also the ones asking the unhelpful questions. However, I do actually put a little blame on the Shoveler. He distracted Captain Amazing at a pretty important time. But it was Captain Amazing's own fool fault he was there in the first place, and I kind of doubt he actually knew how to turn the thing off anyway.