cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/15735604

Perhaps it’s fitting that a film about a ragtag rabble of not-so-superheroes failed to take off at the box office. But, 25 years since its release, the Ben Stiller-starring Mystery Men is worth rescuing from obscurity. That it hasn’t generated the cult following of so many other slightly under-the-radar movies of 1999 – think the cannibal horror movie Ravenous, or the Kirsten Dunst Watergate comedy Dick – feels criminal to the point of super-villainy.

The first and to date last feature film by the TV commercial director Kinka Usher, Mystery Men now seems curiously placed within the history of comic book movies. Released on 6 August 1999 in the US, it spoofed the superheroes that came before it, while anticipating – or preemptively satirising, even – the yet-to-happen superhero boom with ideas as sharp as anything seen in almost two decades of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

  • @SmokumJoe
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    -15 months ago

    I saw it in the theater when it came out and was disappointed. It has some clever moments but overall was nothing engaging.