Mystery Men

Mystery Men [1999]: Champion City’s most praised superhero Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) has released a locked up super villain Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush), in hopes that he will easily defeat him, too gain more money off of sponsorships. But when Captain Amazing gets too cocky while confronting Casanova Frankenstein, he gets himself captured. The only chance of saving Captain Amazing, and Champion City is with a misfit group of superheroes.

Almost as 90’s-00’s as it gets: Mystery Men hasn’t exactly aged well, it’s very cheesy with its camera work, and CGI. Though that makes the film a bit more charming and fun for watching now in a time where most of the shots used in the film have disappeared from Hollywood. To top things off, All Star (the Shrek song) is played twice in the film.

Setting: The best visuals to come from the film are the sets, Champion City is a mixture of Blade Runner’s LA, with an underlying 50’s-60’s theme. Places like Casanova’s castle are wacky but classy (almost like a Doctor Who set), with a futuristic disco theme. It’s really cool to see so many themes mashed together, Champion City is interesting, even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense.

Not the Avengers, or Kick Ass: Mystery Men doesn’t really have a theme when it comes to the types of heroes and villains. Some people actually do have “powers”, and others are just very good at whatever they claim to be good at.

The last bit of compliments, and complaints: Everything in this film is set up nicely, though it’s cheesy, every scene moves the plot forward somehow, and every set up for a joke pays off in the end (this should be a standard, but it’s nice to see a film as goofy as this do these little things almost perfectly). The main cast is great, some of the supporting actors are a bit stale, but nothing big to complain about. The film might be a little too outrageous at times, which is subjective to whether you tolerate that or not.