6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
When Captain Amazing, chief superhero of Champion City, is kidnapped by insane supervillain Casanova Frankenstein, who will save the city and ensure that justice is served? Enter the Mystery Men: Mr. Furious, The Bowler, The Blue Raja, The Shoveler, The Spleen, The Sphinx, and the Invisible Boy- a group of misfits in possession of superpowers...sort of. Watch the mayhem ensue, as this wacky team goes up against Frankenstein and his mad henchmen.
Starring: Ben Stiller, Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Kel MitchellComedy | 100% |
Comic book | Insignificant |
Sci-Fi | Insignificant |
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.84:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 5.1
English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Mystery Men is a cult classic, but Universal obviously had something else in mind for a production budget of $65 million (or more, depending on the source). It assembled a name-brand cast led by Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria and Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush. It recruited a highly regarded director, Kinka Usher, from the same group of slick commercial helmers that spawned Michael Bay (who has a cameo in the film). And it bought the rights to a comic book property known as Flaming Carrot created by Bob Burden, who has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. What could go wrong? Creatively, nothing did. Mystery Men has remained a perennial on home video, and it holds up after multiple viewings. (I watch it again every few years, and I've seen it in every format, including theatrically.) But for reasons at which one can only guess, audiences didn't show when the film was released to theaters in August 1999. The film made less than $30 million at the U.S. box office, less than half its production cost. What's most striking about Mystery Men is its comic bounty. The more varied you like your laughs, the more you're likely to enjoy the film, because it keeps changing registers, mixing the juvenile with the urbane and pairing every dollop of sophisticated wit with an equally silly pratfall. (The Monty Python crew would be proud.) Credit director Usher, his talented ensemble cast (which improvised freely) and ace editor Conrad Buff with melding so many comedic styles that the film can accommodate both the dumbest fart jokes (courtesy of Paul Reubens' character, the Spleen) and hilarious inside references like the publicist who deadpans to his client, "I'm a publicist, not a magician"—and happens to be played by world-renowned magician Ricky Jay.
In the ongoing saga of Universal's catalog titles on Blu-ray, Mystery Men falls somewhere in the middle of the pack. Designed to look as unnatural as possible and photographed by cinematographer Stephen H. Burum (The Untouchables, The Shadow, the first Mission Impossible) with a comic book sheen, this is the rare Blu-ray of which I can confidently say that it should "pop" more than it does. The 1080p, VC-1-encoded image reveals an acceptable level of fine detail in the elaborately designed sets and costumes, and the wide array of colors is well enough represented to distinguish among the many environments of Champion City. But contrast is somewhat understated, and blacks are slightly crushed, which gives a dimness to the image overall. It's almost as if the colorist were afraid that accentuating the image to the proper levels would call too much attention to the natural film grain that remains visible in the background, if you look for it—and, as I have noted elsewhere, Universal's current philosophy seems to be to minimize visible film grain to the extent possible, without stripping away any detail. In this instance, the result isn't a disaster, but the image doesn't reflect the visual exuberance it should have. At least there were no compression errors.
Presented in DTS-HD MA 5.1, the soundtrack for Mystery Men is a playful affair, with frequent occurrences of foley effects and voices in the rear channels. The Bowler's self-guided ball, accompanied by an unearthly Cylon-like hum, provides some interesting pans, and the sustained concluding sequence of the assault on Casanova Frankenstein's mansion has enough crashing, explosions, gunfire and psycho-frakulating (you'll know it when you hear it) to keep all parts of a 5.1 sound system active and engaged. Bass extension is sufficient to have impact, though nothing on a par with the best contemporary soundtracks (e.g., the Transformers films). The dialogue is clear enough to hear every goofy exchange, even with Geoffrey Rush's exaggerated (and unidentifiable) accent. The ripely comic score by Stephen Warbeck (Oscar winner for Shakespeare in Love) has just the right touch of overstatement.
As has become Universal's custom, the Mystery Men Blu-ray has no main menu. Expect this user-unfriendly practice to continue, unless enough people complain. The extras supplied with Mystery Men have been shrinking ever since the 2000 DVD release. The Blu-ray even omits a few that were included on the HD-DVD released in 2007. The following were only on the DVD:
Maybe Mystery Men was made too soon. Audiences in 1999 may not have been ready for a comedy about cut-rate superheroes. Today we've all been exposed to a much wider variety of films based on the Marvel and DC catalogs. We've also seen Kick-Ass (which did much better box office than Mystery Men). The national mood has changed as well. In the prosperous and optimistic Nineties, the blue collar and middle class frustrations of Mystery Men's heroes may have struck some viewers as pitiful. In today's straitened economic climate, their aspiration, through sheer will, to be something more than their limited circumstances should allow, would fit right in. Of course, today much of the existing cast would be too old for their parts, and you wouldn't get the perfectly meshed ensemble that made the existing film. Every time I watch Mystery Men, a different element grabs my attention and stands out as particularly inspired. This time, it was Tom Waits's Doc Heller, whose relaxed self-assurance outmatches even that of the inscrutable Sphinx. After he shows the gang his advanced non-lethal weaponry, the Shoveller exclaims, "Doc, you are a genius!". To which Heller replies with a shrug: "That's what it says on the card." But Heller's card, which he's previously handed over, doesn't say that. Instead, it's a word salad of bizarre occupations, all of them incongruous, none of them "genius": "Weapons Designer, Innovator, Inventor, World Changer", with specialties in "Carnival Rides", "Aromatherapy", "Laser Hair Removal" and "Chicken Rentals". Still, I guess anyone who pursues all those trades at the same time might consider himself a genius. Who knows? (I love absurdist humor.) Although the Blu-ray of Mystery Men isn't the best it could be, it's the best the film has looked since the theater, and Universal is unlikely to revisit it anytime soon. The film itself is highly recommended.
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