Review: Mystery Men

Dir: Kinka Usher

Cast: Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Hank Azaria, Paul Rubins

Category: Comedy

Plot: A group of second rate super hero’s fight to save their city and get some respect.

DVD Special Features: Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, Theatrical Trailer, Close Captioned, Directors Narration, Music Videos, Deleted Scenes and more. This movie has a ton of special features. The directors narration is flat and without tremendous insight. Usher talks most about the scenes that aren’t in the movie. Only a few of these raved about scenes make it into the deleted scenes section. There is a lot to look at but it’s all sub-average and self-serving.

The Good: This is a great movie to look at. The Cinematographer did a great job. The sets and costumes all work great. You can tell that a lot of effort was put into developing a rich comic book setting for these heroes to do their thing.

The cast in this film is unbelievable. Mountains of talent are wasted in this movie. I think everyone did a well with what they were given for a script.

The Bad: Director Kinka Usher got his experience doing commercials and I am not going to hold that against him. With that background in 30-second masterpieces you would expect this movie to movie quickly. Mystery Men is slow moving. All the pieces are in place for a great movie but it just lags and needs more laughs.

I really wanted to like this movie in a big way but this one falls short.

Bottom Line: Great idea weak execution. Won’t offend your date.