# Mystery, Alaska (1999)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

TV scribe David E. Kelley's second big-screen effort of the year is a hackneyed adult version of The Mighty Ducks. Film fans, beware – this does not mean Slapshot. In the movie, a small Alaskan town – and its highly competitive brand of ice hockey - graces the cover of Sports Illustrated, culminating in a showdown with the New York Rangers. It's a typical David-versus-Goliath picture, with the `loser' title affixed only to the sucker in the audience that plunked down green to watch this slow-moving abomination.

The first words in Mystery, Alaska are an expletive spoken by a kid too young to know any better. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be Kelley's attempt at irony (most of the adults say `jeez' and `for God's sake' a la another snowy pic, Fargo) or his craving to work `blue' after years and years of living under the watchful eye of television censors. Remember Betty White in Kelley's summertime flop Lake Placid? It's probably the latter.

As the film opens, Mystery eagerly awaits the new issue of Sports Illustrated, where a feature piece on the town's beloved `Saturday Game' is scheduled to appear. Arriving not long after the magazine is former resident Charles Danner (Hank Azaria, Mystery Men) an employee of Sports Illustrated, who arrives bearing great news – the National Hockey League, impressed with the article, has agreed to fly the New York Rangers to Mystery for an exhibition game against the locals.

Here is Problem No. 1: I can look past the fact that the New York Rangers would never play Mystery, but why would the game take place in Alaska? Would it not make more sense to fly the Mystery players to New York so that the game could be played on a real ice rink? In a bigger arena? Where you wouldn't need to fly a television crew and legions of media personalities? Mystery has 32 days to prepare for the game, both in terms of team preparation and to remedy the fact that they usually play on a pond in front of about fifty people. They acquire a Zamboni while workers quickly build a grandstand and install intricate lighting. In one shot, the film shows four cranes building the outdoor rink. I don't think there are four cranes in the entire state of Alaska, let alone Mystery.

And let's talk about the advertising. Once the game begins, viewers will see a ton of advertising both on and around the rink. Locals even complain about this advertising, which is simply the filmmaker's way of saying `See, this isn't really product placement. It's an integral part of the story.' Bullshit. Use make-believe advertisers if you want, but don't try to legitimize the giant Coca-Cola logo at center ice that fills the entire screen for the opening face-off.

There are plenty of other things to complain about, like the fact that Kelley manages to somehow wedge in a legal battle involving the potential opening of the mega-store Price World and its Mystery-bashing emissary (Michael McKean). Or the use of the Winetka brothers (Adam Beach and Leroy Peltier) lifted right from Slapshot's Hansons. Or the cameo from Mike Myers (Mystery director Jay Roach also helmed both Austin Powers pics), which reveals the actor's unfunny side. Or The Daily Show's hysterical Beth Littleford, who appears long enough to be only a throwaway sexual joke.

None of the above complaints come close to matching the annoying and time-consuming subplot in which the team coach/town sheriff John Biebe (Russell Crowe, L.A. Confidential) is dropped from the big game in favor of a younger, faster player with premature ejaculation. This, exacerbated by the arrival of his wife's (Mary McCormack, True Crime) high school sweetheart (Azaria), leads to rocky times in the Biebe household, leaving the film filled with the gooey sentiment of the worst imaginable Hallmark card.

Highlights include town judge/coach Burt Reynolds (Boogie Nights), who resembles another old guy named Burgess Meredith in Rocky, shouting advice to his team through clenched jaw and…well, that's about it. (1:59 – R for adult language and sexual content)

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