# Mystery Men (1999)

### reviewed by
MR JONATHAN RICHARDS

    SLOWER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET....

    MYSTERY MEN
    Directed by Kinka Usher
    Screenplay by Neil Cuthbert from the comic book by Bob Burden
    With Ben Stiller, William H. Macy
    UA South      PG-13      117 min

"Mystery Men" is high-concept satire with low-concept execution, a spoof of superhero conventions that finds itself unable to leap low comedy at a single bound. It's full of smart lines and ideas, and yet its sophomoric leaden-footedness renders it as bankrupt of comic superpowers as the inept title characters.

Champion City, home to the superstar superhero Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear), has hit a crime drought. Thanks to his crime-busting talents, the few remaining crooks are pathetic gangs up only to such criminal enterprises as crashing a dance at a nursing home and stealing wigs and dentures.

A trio of superhero wannabes -- Mr. Furious (Ben Stiller), who gets furious and rides a Harley compatible; The Blue Rajah (Hank Azaria), who speaks with an affected British accent and throws forks; and The Shoveler (William H. Macy), a decent family man who hits people with a shovel -- tries to foil the nursing home caper, but even at this they have to be bailed out by Amazing, an effective but preening and commercialized crime-fighter whose face appears on billboards all over the city, and whose uniform is plastered with advertising logos. But Amazing, faced with the Alexandrine dilemma of no new worlds to conquer, arranges to spring his former arch enemy, the evil genius Cassanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush), from the nuthouse. When Frankenstein turns the tables and captures Amazing, the hapless trio springs into action to save him and Champion City.

To recruit some backup they hold superhero auditions which produce aspirants even more hopless than the core trio. Out of this pool they select Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell), who can only be invisible when nobody's looking; The Spleen (Paul Reubens), who farts spectacularly; The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), who flings a transparent bowling ball with her mafioso father's skull inside it; and The Sphinx (Wes Studi), who utters deeply inane nuggets of wisdom.

There are moments of wit, and Macy does his best to lend comic dignity to the production. Garofalo utters her one-liners with spirit, and Kinnear makes a nicely pompous hero when the inanity of his dialogue doesn't hog-tie him tighter than his nemesis ever could.

It sounds so much better than it plays. When a movie gets some of its biggest laughs from flatulence, it is probably fair to conclude that it stinks.

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