Review of Mystery Team (2009) by Michael W — 14 Oct 2010

Derrick Comedy make their first foray beyond their Upright Citizens Brigade-like sketch comedy - which I've been watching since college - into the world of film. Like most first time filmmakers, they only had a shoestring budget at their disposal. And what they came up with has ultimately divided audiences - it's a film you're either going to love or hate depending on whether it meshes with your sense of humor. Personally, I had a lot of fun.

The cast is pretty much a good armload of small name but talented comedians. Three fifths of Derrick comprise the central trio that make up the Mystery Team - Donald Glover, D.C. Pierson, and Dominic Dierkes. Director Dan Eckman and producer Meggie McFadden both make very brief appearances, as they have along with the rest of Derrick on NBC's fantastic Community, on which Donald Glover's in the main cast. All of them deliver excellent comedy performances. The supporting cast is rounded out by UCB founding member Matt Walsh, current SNL cast member Bobby Moynihan, The Office's adorable Ellie Kemper (Who has one of the best moments in the film among her one-liners she shows up to yell), a very small straight man role for comedian Tom Shillue, and a pretty substantive straight woman role for Parks and Recreation's fantastic Aubrey Plaza. To say the least, there's a LOT of people I like in this movie, and they make it shine.

The characters are all one to two-dimensional at best, but all to well written comedy effect. The central mystery plot is pretty bare bones - it's basically just there for comical situations to play out over. Character development is minimal, but what's there gives the film an extra bit of heart as our naive, innocent heroes sink deeper into a very dark world. And that's the core of the film's comedy - the clash between the boys' incredible innocence and the dark, seedy, perverse underworld they spend the film romping through. Not all the jokes work, and some of them are a bit too gross, but this is one of the few movies to make me laugh out loud multiple times in recent years - it gets extra points for that.

Dan Eckman's direction is competent, as you'd come to expect from his direction of Derrick's comedy sketches. The film starts out feeling a little disjointed, but it settles down and starts to flow better within the first half hour. And Donald Glover - otherwise known as Childish Gambino - scored the film, giving it a soundtrack that makes you think of children's adventure films, amusingly clashing with all the dark situations the Mystery Team get themselves into.

All-in-all, as I said before, your enjoyment of Mystery Team really comes down to your personal taste in comedy. This is a movie that many people won't enjoy, but those who do will find a lot to laugh at, and to me, it was well worth watching. Gotta support legitimately funny comedians from my generation.