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Mystery Men

Released: 08/06/99

Version: Video

Length: 122 minutes

Rated: PG-13

Main Cast: Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Geoffrey Rush, Janeane Garofalo, Greg Kinnear, Paul Reubens, Hank Azaria, Claire Forlani, Kel Mitchell, Lena Olin, Wes Studi & Tom Waits

Now here’s an interesting movie. It seems to be a cross of a bunch of superhero shows rolled into one. It’s about a group of superhero wannabes. (And, yes, it’s based on a real "Dark Horse" comic book.) We open with a neat looking city. It has a Gotham-like visage. As the camera moves in closer, we see an ad or two with some superhero on it. Then we go into a party scene.

Oddly enough, the party is for a bunch of elderly patrons. This is just bizarre! Needless to say, some evil-doers known as "The Red Eyes" break in and try to steal the valuables. The hero-wannabes, The Blue Raja (Hank Azaria), The Shoveler (William H. Macy), and Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller) try to stop them and end up getting beat up. In fact, they smack each other almost as often as they miss the bad guys. The "real" superhero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) comes through a window and quickly saves the day.

Capt. Amazing is a conceited fool. He has a publicist, and he’s covered with decals/patches because of all the endorsements he does. He’s also rid the city of all the super-villains, so he’s getting bored. Thus, he does something really dumb: he recommends the release of the Super Villain, Casanova Frankenstein. Casanova quickly captures the Captain (with a "chloroform deploying enticement gizmo") after getting some of his old gang together again. (The main part of the gang is "The Disco Boys.")

The wannabes try to save him, but they are quickly beaten back by "The Disco Boys." Thus, they have a superhero try-out thing to try to get some more members to help them. (They found someone known as "The Invisible Boy" [Kel Mitchell] and "The Spleen" [Paul Rubens AKA PeeWee Herman] a little earlier.) They watch a bunch of losers and they think all is lost. Then a chick shows up with an odd looking bowling ball. It has a skull in it and it floats. They get her, of course!

Now I’ll jump a little ways ahead and talk about them having a confrontation with Casanova in his Corvette Sting Ray limo. He pulls over and they hurl insults at each other. Then the wannabes attack the car and bust it up quite a bit, but it’s pretty pathetic (and funny) to watch them use their "super powers." Mr. Furious’ attack is jumping on the car and trying to scratch it with his fingernails.

"The Disco Boys" don’t take this well and try to take down these fools outside of a restaurant. However, their guns are split by "The Sphinx" and he becomes the wannabes' teacher.

Eventually, they get some cool weapons from a Mr. Heller who makes non-lethal weapons. They get a clothes shrinker, a tornado in a can, the Blame gun (it makes people get agitated and blame each other for everything)…yeah, weird stuff, I know!

Now Casanova Frankenstein has a huge gang, so when they break in they have to take down a bunch of baddies. They use a giant electro-nuclear magnet to take the weapons away from the bad guys. Then they zap them with their various own non-lethal stuff. They also have a decent fighting sequence.

Mr. Furious takes down Casanova because he’s got his girl. And they destroy Casanova’s evil machine which would have zapped everyone and messed up their minds. How do they destroy it? With "The Bowler’s" (Janeane Garofalo) cool ball of course!