Looking at some of the reviews on here its clear that this movie did not find the audience it deserved at the time. In 1999 many people were simply not quite ready to understand a superhero movie which was based more or less in reality and was a send up of the genre. Anyone expecting a run of the mill superheroes with superpowers movie would be disappointed. However this is a much smarter movie in which we have average guys with alot of heart but zero abilities who try to fight crime with hilariously incompetent results. They are more likely to hurt each other than any criminals. These heroes dont have cool names, cool costumes and don't even have cool pretend powers. Another huge disappointment for the average comic book hero fan as whats the point if they cant do anything we cant? Watching this movie post Megamind, Deadpool, Watchmen and Kickass this movie makes total sense. What also seems to make sense is that every one of those movies, all seem to have borrowed heavily from Mystery Men. What you do get is a fantastic cast, laugh out jokes, crazy set pieces, many quotable lines all wrapped up in a fairly family friendly package. Think of this as a live action Megamind or PG version of Kickass. The story is quite straight forward but it does still make fun of the usual comic book tropes in a fresh way. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed any of the movies I compared Mystery Men to, you will wonder why you had previously let this one slip by and also just how many of the current crop of "original" and "smarter" comic book movies have ripped off Mystery Men? Deserves to be seen.

The year is 1999 and the place is Champion City and all of the super villains are either dead or behind bars, so in a city over run with super heroes, there is no work. So the greatest super hero, Captain Amazing, decides to manipulate a few things to keep his sponsorship, and releases Cassanova Frankinstein. Unfortunately Cassanova gets the better of him and kills him so it is up to a hopeless trio: the Blue Rajah, The Shovel, and Mr Furious, to get him back. Unfortunately they are hopeless so they recruit some more, landing up with the Invisible Man, the Spleen, and the Bowler's daughter. Then the Sphinx, a mysterious figure, turns up to train them.

This movie, which is actually based on a comic series of the same name, is a farce of super hero movies. The mad inventor emphasises that all of his inventions are non-lethal, the Blue Rajah throws spoons and forks, but not knives, the Shovel is married with kids and his wife tries to tell him that maybe the superhero business is not cut out for him, and nobody finds Mr Furious threatening, at all.

It is a cute little movie and deals with these mystery men's right of ascension. Now that Captain Amazing is dead, a new lot of super heroes are needed, and unfortunately all they have are these guys. The Blue Rajah lives with his mother and Mr Furious is trying too hard to be something that he is not. In the end, when Mr Furious comes to terms with who he really is, a guy named Roy, then he becomes Mr Furious.

This is a pretty cool movie, and I do recommend it, but it is not one that stands out so much that one would want to see it again and again. I guess there is a little criticism here, but in the end any comment that it would want to make, simply falls down into a pool of laughs and weirdness. It may be weird, but it is not the weird that makes me interested in the movie.

I enjoy a good parody flick every now and then, and this would have been better if they kept the dopey juvenile stuff out of it. Paul Reubens in the cast with his gimmick was just asking for trouble; I was waiting for the zits on his face to move around like Marty Feldman's hump in "Young Frankenstein" and that didn't happen, so there was an opportunity missed. Hank Azaria as The Blue Raja and William H. Macy as the Shoveler were about the best the picture had to offer as they played their parts both ways, serious and funny.

For old time TV and movie fans, let me pose a question - didn't the man under the Sphinx mask look like it might have been an aged Jay Silverheels? I know, he was long gone by the time this film came out, but that's the reaction I had. So I checked out Wes Studi's photo gallery here on IMDb and one can notice the resemblance.

The thing that really surprised me in the story was how the evil Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush) rigged up that vaporizer to reduce Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear) to ashes, and he stayed dead! What!!?? That's not supposed to happen! Super-hero deaths are never supposed to be as certain as death and taxes, so I was shocked that no one thought of a way to reanimate his remains. Maybe in a sequel?

Well, I don't know. I thought this would be a little better than it turned out to be, but I do appreciate some of the more clever gimmicks like Raja's silverware dexterity and the super-hero tryout routine. Seeing Louise Lasser as Raja's Mom once again was kind of neat too, doing a senior citizen rendition of Her Mary Hartman character. I guess if you're on the fence about watching this one, I'd have to say, 'What the fork, just do it'.