Super Movies! The one with Ben Stiller and a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller

 

Title: Mystery Men

What Year?: 1999

Classification: Parody

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, I’m coming out of a voluntary slow-down in writing, during the course of which I put most of my review features aside. For the comeback, I decided I wanted to start with this one, which so far hasn’t really given me enough material to stand up on its own. I still haven’t quite decided how far I want this to go, but I was sure what the next movie was going to be. It’s easily one of the oddest and most ill-fated movies I’m likely to cover (though nothing could top Fantastic Four), yet it also “should” have been one of the best. With that I present Mystery Men.

Our story begins with shots of a semi-futuristic cityscape, dotted by billboards of a handsome man in a superhero costume. We then cut to a robbery in progress at a social function for elderly philanthropists, which is in turn interrupted by the arrival of trio of heroes, consisting of a middle-aged man with a shovel and helmet, a guy in a turban who specializes in throwing forks, and someone in leather who keeps announcing how enraged he is. Unfortunately, the bad guys turn the tables on the band of misfits, until the arrival of Captain Amazing. We shortly learn that the minor heroes are apparently ordinary people who have been fighting minor villainy while the actual superhuman gets all the glory and corporate sponsorships to boot. It looks like they have their chance when the Captain is captured by a newly released supervillain with the name Casanova Frankenstein, but they prove ill-prepared for his apparently 1970s-themed goons. They must round out their group with the likes of a human bioweapon named the Spleen, the Baby Bowler armed with the skull of her father, and a teen whose invisibility powers may or may not exist. But when a rescue mission leaves Captain Amazing dead, it’s up to them to save the city from the villain’s superweapon!

Mystery Men was a decidedly liberal adaptation of the Flaming Carrot “indie” comics. Eventual star Stiller (previously sighted in Highway to Hell) was reportedly offered the chance to direct before the duties were assigned to Kinka Usher, best known for work in advertising; Stiller accepted the role of Captain Furious. The production assembled many more high-profile stars including William H. Macy as the Shoveler, Hank Azaria as the Blue Raj, SNL alumnus Janeane Garofalo as the Bowler and Graham Greene as their trainer the Sphinx. Other supporting cast included singer Tom Waits (see… The Earth Dies Screaming???) as an eccentric weapons designer, Paul Rubens as Spleen, Eddie Izzard as the villain’s disco-loving second-in-command and Claire Forlani as a waitress/ damsel. Unfortunately, the movie reached theaters at a time when both current and retrospective observers saw dwindling interest in “superhero” movies, with or without a comedy element. The film ultimately earned $33.5 million against a $68M budget. A scene of the armored Jitney leaving the junkyard also includes several shots of the Kabinenroller, a problematically-classified compact vehicle released in the 1950s by the WW2 aircraft maker Messerschmitt.

This time around, my experiences are definite and relatively shallow in origin. I heard about it on and off from references in online articles and web chats over several years before I finally ordered it from Netflix (yes, I still use the mail) in the spring of 2020. I found it more odd than amusing, but definitely liked the characters and performances from Forlani, Greene and especially Macy, otherwise most familiar to me from Jurassic Park 3. (It’s fun, dammit!) I thought of it again after mentioning it critically in my Hancock review, with the criticism being meant for those who marketed it far more than those who made it. I realized soon after that my comments sounded harsher than was fair or intended, and I quickly decided I needed to give it another go. I finally ordered it soon after (actually a little before I picked up Supergirl), but I was still busy with other things, and I knew this one needed a bit more time. I gave it one more viewing the day before this review. It was… still odd. On an Italian movie scale. 

For this movie, my dictum with Italian movies will apply in spades: Even where I like it, I’m still not satisfied that I “get” it. By all accounts, this movie is like an inside joke about an inside joke; there’s too many references to comics, movies, and ‘90s in general for anybody to follow everything, least of all me. To its credit, most of the jokes and the general atmosphere of the humor work just fine no matter how clueless one is to the context, and for a comedy, that’s saying a lot. I suppose what has both kept me coming back to this movie and held me back from reviewing it is that I can’t avoid looking for some flaw to explain why it didn’t do better. There’s certainly things that could have been done just as well for less money, particularly the effects, which are less fun and flat-out less effective than the no-tech approach of gems like Dark Star. It’s also easy to get lost over the villains, which feels like what might happen if the rogues’ gallery of the ‘60s Batman series were put under the command of Heath Ledger’s Joker. Still, the real “problem” anybody then or now could have pointed to was that it came out after the oxygen-destroying fuel-air bomb that was Batman And Robin. (Never. Ever.)

On the other side, there’s plenty more to like from the characters, which judging from a few polite correspondences is arguably an improvement on the source material. Stiller, for most part as close as we get to a main character, is perfectly entertaining, almost instinctively mocking villains and fellow heroes alike, while Azaria’s casting is inspired insanity. The true standouts in an already crowded cast are Garofalo and Macy. The former grows on the viewer, especially on repeat viewing, as she dialogues both with the cast and her father, whose skull is encased in her ball. Her role can be encapsulated with an almost casual remark, “His death was ruled accidental, he fell down an elevator shaft… onto some bullets.” Macy, meanwhile, is absolutely radiant, digging into his homespun everyman like Tom Hanks and Jimmy Stewart, with an assortment of one-liners and non sequitirs that add up to a genuinely stirring performance.

Now, it’s time for the “one scene”, and this time I have to give some honorable mentions, particularly to the trio’s first confrontation with the disco goons (“That’s your power? Guns?”) and the surreal ride out of the junkyard. In all this wealth, the part that stands out to me is one of the few with Captain Amazing off-duty. Following his intervention in the opening fight, we follow him home in a limo, still in a costume studded with product placements rather than a logo of his own. Along the way, he talks with a public-relations confidante who repeatedly warns that there is less public interest in his exploits simply because of fewer and fewer supervillains around to fight. That sets the hero reminiscing about old foes, only to be reminded that one after the other is dead or in prison. Finally, he recalls his fights with Frankenstein, to the point of trying to act out the villain’s gaze. It sets up what will be a fateful subplot, yet it is almost better appreciated on its own, as a fascinating glimpse of what life as a “real” superhero would be like.

To me, the real benchmark of this movie is Hancock. I still by all means consider that the better movie, even though its flaws were marked enough that I felt it necessary to give it a lower ranking. By comparison, Mystery Men succeeds by sticking to the comedy. As a result, it does not challenge or question itself or its sources as much as Hancock does, yet still manages to subvert the genre without flatly mocking it. In a sense, the two are mirror images to each other. One is about a superhuman struggling to handle ordinary life, while the other is about clearly normal mortals trying to do a Superman’s job. Both do their concept justice, and both are certainly worth watching.