George Roots (GeorgeRoots)
"Mystery Men" (1999) came out when I was 7 years of age. It was one of those rare instances I had no idea what we were going to see, and I remember falling in love on the car ride home with it's absurdity ever since.Taking the street level hero to new depths of low. Three "heroes" Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), The Blue Raja (Hank Azaria) & The Shoveler (William H. Macy) decide to recruit more people to their cause, amongst the growing epidemic of disco street thugs. All of which are being organised by recently released criminal mastermind, Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush).From that description alone, you can tell this movie is like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. The villains Geoffrey Rush & Eddie Izzard's chemistry together is so hilarious, I would love to see more movies with them together. The rest of the cast are made up of too many talented comedians, who all get an equal amount of time to shine. The plot is thin, yet the laughs are heavy. As I get older I do re-watch it from time to time, just to see if it continues to hold up and it pleasantly does.Final Verdict: I loved it the first time I saw it, and I continue to love it all the more now. The only thing that holds it back over the years is that the budget was pretty large. 7.5/10.
the_winch2001
I am spinal injuredI saw this when I was younger and thought it was incredibly stupid. I thought that over time I had become more accepting of slapstick films and gave it another try..... No, I was right the first time. Horrible. It has a couple of clever lines but immediately in the first scene of the film you start to wonder if the writer(s) were still in middle school. The jokes are often random and go off on a tangent. I suffered through it hoping it might end with at least one good laugh. I felt so bad for leaving this on while my wife was in the room I immediately cooked her dinner and dessert and admitted that it was truly one of the most painful films i've ever seen (up there with catwoman i'd say). On the upside if you like movies like "dude, wheres my car" and "spy kids", then you'll love this heaping pile of dung.
BA_Harrison
I'll tell you what the mystery is as far as I am concerned: how a cool, extremely witty, and thoroughly entertaining movie like this one can fail at the box-office when far less worthy films not only make massive profits, but go on to spawn umpteen often inferior sequels. It does little to build my faith in humanity.For me, Mystery Men is two hours of sheer joy, with some incredibly funny lines of dialogue, excellent special effects, imagination to spare, and wonderful characters brought to life by a superb cast, my favourite performances of the whole film being from Wes Studi as The Sphinx, who continually spouts hilarious pearls of wisdom, and Geoffrey Rush as delightfully devious villain Casanova Frankenstein.Oh well, if the general public can't appreciate such a creative, quirky and innovative gem, it's their loss; I guess it'll be up to the select few with far superior taste to keep the flame alive...
Leofwine_draca
I'm not sure why I watched this, as I hate a lot of comedies and I'm sure to avoid the kind of films that Ben Stiller makes in particular. But I do try and watch superhero films, and the synopsis of this one sounded interesting, to say the least: a group of would-be crime-fighters, with pathetic superpowers, attempt to beat an arch villain. There's a premise with potential, if nothing else.Sadly, what I ended up watching was a heavily sanitised Hollywood film with an oh-so predictable outcome: that by working together and putting faith in each other, this rag-tag group of misfits can end up winning the day. Literally every step of the film is signposted from the beginning, from Stiller's tired romance with an extraneous Claire Forlani to the bad guy's plans for world domination. Even worse, the humour sucks. One guy is flatulent, another guy thinks he's invisible when he's not, and the wit never goes any deeper than that.I realised, in the end, that I was watching a kid's film made on a totally undemanding level. It's a shame, because there are some fine actors appearing here, not least William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Geoffrey Rush and Wes Studi, but in the end MYSTERY MEN is cheesy, dated and dull. It took another 11 years for a film to put some real bite into a superhero parody: watch KICK-ASS to see how this should have been done.
AD
