Director: Kinka Usher

Keywords: Comedy, Action/Adventure, Comic Book

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
Hank Azaria	Actor	25-Apr-1964		Moe and Apu on The Simpsons
Michael Bay	Film Director	17-Feb-1964		Director, The Rock, Armageddon
Corbin Bleu	Actor	21-Feb-1989		Jump In!
Cee-Lo	Rapper	30-May-1974		Goodie Mob, Gnarls Barkley
Dane Cook	Comic	18-Mar-1972		Harmful If Swallowed
Claire Forlani	Actor	1-Jul-1972		Boys and Girls
Janeane Garofalo	Comic	28-Sep-1964		Actor, Comedian, Author, Activist
Eddie Izzard	Comic	7-Feb-1962		Bloke in a dress going on and on
Ricky Jay	Magician	1948		Jay's Journal of Anomalies
Doug Jones	Actor	24-May-1960		Pan's Labyrinth
Greg Kinnear	Actor	17-Jun-1963		Talk Soup
Artie Lange	Comic	11-Oct-1967		MADtv, Howard Stern
Louise Lasser	Actor	11-Apr-1939		Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Jenifer Lewis	Actor	25-Jan-1957		The Preacher's Wife
William H. Macy	Actor	13-Mar-1950		Fargo
Monet Mazur	Actor	17-Apr-1976		Blow
Kel Mitchell	Actor	25-Aug-1978		Good Burger, Mystery Men
Mark Mothersbaugh	Musician	18-May-1950		Devo
Lena Olin	Actor	22-Mar-1956		Enemies: A Love Story
Pras	Musician	19-Oct-1972		Co-founder of The Fugees, Ghetto Superstar
Riki Rachtman	TV Personality	15-Jun-1965		Hosted MTV's Headbanger's Ball
Paul Reubens	Actor	27-Aug-1952		Pee-wee Herman
Geoffrey Rush	Actor	6-Jul-1951		Shine, Quills
Ben Stiller	Actor	30-Nov-1965		There's Something About Mary
Wes Studi	Actor	17-Dec-1947		Geronimo: An American Legend
Tom Waits	Musician	7-Dec-1949		Heartattack and Vine
Jody Watley	Singer/Songwriter	30-Jan-1959		Hasta la vista, baby

REVIEWS

Review by Walter Frith (posted on 12-Jul-2007)

'Mystery Men' has all of the ingredients of a typical 1990's film that looks like an adult comic book layered with special effects. Naturally it's all computerized and has paid advertising seen throughout the film by the corporate states of America. The hero, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) wears his outfit plastered with ads from sponsors and the film's bizarre visuals look in many cases like 'Batman' and 'Blade Runner' on LSD. Now that you have an idea of how it looks, it's important to tell you how it feels. There are moments of sporadic laughter but the film has clumsy execution and an even clumsier tone. The way the heroes carry out their mission is unconvincing in the face of unspeakable evil and no one would believe for a second that they could overcome their adversaries and save the day for the forces of good. Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), the Blue Raja (Hank Azaria), the Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), the Shoveler (William H. Macy), Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell), the Spleen (Paul Reubens) are a team of wannabe heroes. Some of them have fake accents, some use the tools of mere mortals and in general look like a gang of club members who got together in one afternoon and decided to be crime fighters and went to the nearest garage sale to get their arsenal of weapons. Forks, shovels and other oddities are used and in the opening scene we find they need a lot of work when they try and save a seniors home from a group of invading meanies. The original members of the group are Mr Furious, the Blue Raja and the Shoveler. They are joined later by the Bowler, Invisible Boy and the Spleen. The most intriguing member of the group is the Bowler (Garofolo) who has the skull of her dead father inside her ball and brags effortlessly that "The guy at the pro shop did it for me." When Captain Amazing is held captive in the evil clutches of Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush), the heroes try and save him but have to deal with the goons aiding the chief bad guy. Casanova Frankenstein's plot is to destroy the city that kept him in an insane asylum for many torturous years. With his ego the size a dozen pro athletes, some would argue that Captain Amazing's eventual fate is justice in the making while the amateurs get all the deserving glory. Director Kinka Usher catapults the film like a guided missile gone awry. I enjoyed some of the antics and the way it made me laugh from time to time but overall I just couldn't find enough to sustain a film with a running length of 121 minutes. Neil Cuthbert is the author of the film's screenplay based on the comic book series Dark Horse created by Bob Burden. In my review of 1998's 'There's Something About Mary', I criticized the film for going too far in its display of overly crude material and I said that Ben Stiller was rather flat and unfunny. In 'Mystery Men' I found that his performance as the most screwed up hero probably looked good on paper but his execution of it is comparable to the least funny member of the original Three Stooges. The rest of the cast members are very flat and the fact that there are definitely too many of them makes it hard to root for any single one of them. Throughout the history of film, many have argued that some material just isn't capable of being filmed. Some literature worked better in plain text on paper. Some of it looks better as images in squares known as comic books and while special effects have worked marvelously for many films in the nineties, just as many of them have suffered from overkill and have passed themselves off as flash over substance. 'Mystery Men' may be 1999's ultimate definition of that. Visit FILM FOLLOW-UP by Walter Frith

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