From time to time an emailed review just strikes me as the most brilliant thing since raspberry watermelon jam, and this one is it. I tell you, I hope that Executive Man becomes a regular here because I just about fucking died reading this brilliant piece. Read whether you give a crap about Mystery Men or not... Just read for the sheer joy of it!
You don't know me, but you all want to be me. I sit in my bungalow on The Lot (guess which one), hit lunch at where ever Peter Bart writes about that week, and then get all sorts of calls from people begging me to see their movie and tell me how to fix it, sell it, buy it, or dump it. I'm the guy who reads all these reports every day while my Harvard summer intern gets my car washed, my assistant runs to the cleaners, and my other assistant fills out my expense form. I've never met the man, I've never talked to him, but I've seen almost all of his movies almost all the way through, so Tom Cruise is nonetheless a close personal friend of mine. Yep, I'm a power player. A Bigshot. A Suit. A Studio Exec. Hail my power, envy my power... whatever your choice, You Will Follow.
So I'm in the middle of my morning manicure/blowjob, (at least one of) my feet on my desk, my speakerphone on of course. Ring ring ring. The damn intern forgot to turn the ringer off again. But in this case, there's no need to give the "you'll never work in this town again" speech for the third time today (even though I only meant it the second time). It's another Studio Exec, from a rival studio. He wants to work for me, so he kisses my ass (we have a special add-on to the studio phone systems that let's callers do this holographically) and begs me to attend a special screening across town. Well, I needed to run to North Hollywood to pick up some new porn (interns never get it right, anyway), so I consent. So off to the Universal City Cinemas I went. (Never mind they forgot to comp my parking, so I had to shell out seven bucks for a parking space for my German-Italian all-terrain sports sedan diagonally across three spaces in fear someone would actually breathe on it, and then removed my windshield wipers so I couldn't get a ticket or a flyer for cheap Thai food.)
The flick was MYSTERY MEN. And let me tell you, because you can believe me, because as a Studio Exec I am never allowed to lie (or at least admit to lying)... it's brilliant. Truly. But most of The Masses would never know.
And you'd never know from the reaction of the audience. See, for the most they Just Didn't Get It. It's only partially their fault. And I don't know if it's because they've surrendered their intellect or if we Studio Execs have finally beaten it out of them. I hope it's the latter.
Kinka Usher (another close personal friend of mine since I was two people behind him/her at Ralph's Grocery a year ago) has made one of the most subversively brilliant and funny films I've seen. Now, it's not as laugh-out-loud or obvious as SOUTH PARK, but it's damn funny, as long as you think while (or soon after) you watch.
The best thing about the movie is that is so referential to every over-the-top-idiotic actioner to come out since Die Hard. The camera angles, the gratituous explosions, the poorly motivated Bad Guy, and wanton blood and sex (sometimes together)... they are all inspired by and come from the most horrid place imaginable... our collective cinematic memories.
The movie is a commentary on action films, and the fact that the mostly 17-year-old audience didn't get it only proves how perceptive Kinka is. These younguns and their crucial $8 have been beaten into idiocy by Die Hard II, Die Hard III, Rambo II, Rambo III, any $100 million grossing American Studio film by a Dutch, Swedish, or German director, all the one-word-titled and most of the two-word-titled Schwartzenegger films, anything Kopelson's produced since 1994, or anything Jon Peters has ever even read after the first Batman.
Don't get me wrong, these people are all close, personal friends of mine, and they've proven themselves to be better than almost anyone at conning 17-year-old boys out of their $8, which is all we really care about. And to get that, we've twisted all you people into following formulaic plots concocted by no less than 12 writers per film (were negotiating with the WGA to change the designation from "Written By" to " 'Written' by"), fast cameras, Oscar winners in small-but-crucial supporting roles, music that tells you what to think rather than reflect what you feel... if it all wasn't so obvious, I feel like I was spilling trade secrets. But instead I'm laughing all the way to my leased house in Malibu.
But back to the film.
You might think I'm completely dissing the movie (another term I've verified by calling my good friend Puff Daddy, whom Oliver Stone recommended to me personally to call for "Street Language" tutorials but definitely NOT for acting lessons). I'm not. Not at all. This is a film you have to see, and that you will thank me for seeing. Even if you don't get The Big Joke, you'll get all the Obvious Little Ones. Small ones are sweeter. Big Ones make you choke. At least, that's what I tell my girlfriend du jour, out of half rationalization and half rationale.
If you know nothing about this film, it concerns a troupe of second-rate superheroes with odd and seemingly worthless talents (people I can certainly identify with, if not the rest of the world) who have to rally to save their beloved Champion City from the evils of Cassanova Frankenstein.
The script is deliberately conscious of the formula factor. Every character intro, every beat, every segment of the arc (all terms I know are right because I just had a Stanford intern call my good friend Billy Goldman to verify), are measured, written, and executed to be as cliched as possible.
Now you say, cliche is bad. Wrong. Here, cliche is good, but only because the Best Character Actors In The World are playing them, and it's part of the joke.
Bill Macy (who I used to let sleep on my couch when he was still doing walk-ons in Mamet films), Ben Stiller (who's father gave me my first Big Break when I was just a wide-eyed little pisher - in fact, he taught me the meaning of the word "pisher"), Janeane Garofalo (who, restraining orders aside, is one of my closest friends), Hank Azaria (wonderful wedding last weekend Hank, thanks for the invite and hope you like the Cartier gift bag), Wes Studi (cast not only because he's an incredible actor, but also because Hollywood has that pesky EEOC hearing next month), Geoffrey Rush (who I discovered years ago but wouldn't cast in any films because no one else had ever cast him in any films) and Paul Reubens (probation voucher, brought his own tissues this time) all are incredibly smart actors who truly Get It.
They milk the dialogue, they add their intellect and force of character, and they truly mold each of their heroes into indellible and unforgettable PEOPLE, not cartoon characters. Unlike in the actioners I usually throw at you in this box office shell game, these are real people surrounded by cartoon, not caricatures surrounded by cartoon. You believe them, you love them, you are them, except the Mystery Men are smart enough not to pay to see DEEP BLUE SEA or WILD WILD WEST.
Kinka uses every silly camera trick that anyone who ever worked for Jerry Bruckheimer or paid Don Simpson an unwarranted compliment out of fear used. It's exaggerated, it's crazy, it's manipulative.... and that's the point. See it in context and you'll be laughing at every edit. Don't see it in context, and you'll just have to wait for the fart jokes or a Ben Stiller witicism, and luckily those are plentiful, and require no analysis. For those of you out there that let fart jokes blow over your head, there's some cool explosions.
Wes Studi as the Sphinx, is without a doubt - and I can say this with a straight and sincere face - the single best Native American actor in this film. When he tutors and trains his grasshopperlike Mystery Men, his voice echoes with the Wisdom of Ages. He's Chingachook, Sun Tzu, Bhudda, Quai-Chang, and Jack Handy combined. If you don't find yourself quoting him at the office the next day, then you need to see the film again and take notes.
Janeane plays a slightly distrubed kinetic psychic with Freudian conflict and a bowling ball all of us will soon be checking eBay for. This movie once again, like CLAY PIGEONS, PERMANENT MIDNIGHT, the guest penpal voice on FELICITY, and the MAD ABOUT YOU finale, that she is one of the best actresses in The Biz. Funny, smart, convincing, sincere. This is a woman who's performances are always perfect and windows I always look forward to peeking through. And since I wrote my number on her coaster last night at Spago's I need to practice my compliments. At least this time, when she calls, I won't be lying. She's priceless and would be an absolutely perfect woman if she didn't smoke (smoking is out this year, so I have to say that).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll wrap this up. It's late and while I've been writing I've had three hookers waiting for me in my hottub. Don't worry about me, I negotiated a flat rate and not hourly. Besides, The Studio lets me expense it.
Some of you are bored, so I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version, cut to a length even a graduate of an American high school can understand... It's just damn funny watching these characters run through this really big city blowing up shit and saving the world from some big bad plasma desctrcto-ray.
We are all Mystery Men at heart... at least, those of us in the exec ranks are. We have no useful talent for anything beyond the world we create for ourselves. Just as the slaves stood with Spartacus, I stand with the Mystery Men.
Until next time...
