FLOP CULTURE

Released 25 years ago, was this team-up of Earth’s sloppiest heroes ahead of its time? Or too ill-de ined to ful il the promise in its gathering of gormless do-gooders?

Why it was a good idea (on paper)

A-holes assemble! In retrospect, there’s no mystery as to why 1999’s riff on Bob Burden’s Flaming Carrot Comics would be greenlit. As sundry Guardians and Deadpools have since proved, odd/goofball superheroes have serious comic mileage.

What went wrong?

In the event, Mystery Men suffered from too much comic mileage. Directing from Neil (Hocus Pocus) Cuthbert’s script, commercials man Kinka Usher was blessed with a crack comic cast, including Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, William H. Macy, Hank Azaria,

Kel Mitchell and Paul Reubens. But the job of wrangling them was perhaps a curse for an inexperienced helmer. Spot-on casting as sour supe Mr Furious, Stiller said the script was constantly reworked as the leads improvised.

Over-budgeted at $68m, the film’s shoot time sprawled, with Garofalo lamenting the ‘very long hours’ in which ‘very little’ got done. Azaria bemoaned the on-set struggles to balance character comedy with the demands of a glossy effects piece, while Garofalo added, ‘I have no idea what they were trying to do with the film, but they sure didn’t accomplish it.’ Critics couldn’t see the point either, arguing that since many superhero titles were self-satirical anyway, wasn’t the satire redundant? Ahead of its peak-superhero moment but not savvy enough to channel its source material’s strengths, the result put the box-office ‘miss’ in Mystery.

Redeeming feature

Between Macy’s dignified Shoveler (‘I shovel very well’) and Tom Waits’ gravelly Doc Heller, Mystery Men throws enough daft ideas at the wall for some to stick.

What happened next?

Cuthbert got one more film made (erm, Pluto Nash), though Usher never directed another. Meanwhile, later superhero films showed how genre self-awareness and sincerity could mix.

Should it be remade?

With Boogie Nights in mind, Burden later wondered how the film might have played under Paul Thomas Anderson’s watch. Mystery Men hardly merits a redo in post-The Boys/ MCU times, but we’d pay to see that unlikely vision fulfilled.