'Mystery Team' review by Captain Raptor
These are dark days for fans of American cult comedies. Community breathed its last breath a couple of months ago, and Parks And Recreation is gearing up for its final season. Wouldn't it be nice to go back to a time before NBC started getting axe-happy with our favourites? A time like, say, 2009, when both these shows premiered and two of their stars (Donald Glover and Aubrey Plaza) co-starred in Mystery Team, a comedy about former child detectives who never grew up.
A lot of the film relies on the charisma of those two to pull it through. Plainly put, Mystery Team is dumb, mainly reliant on crudeness and shock factor for humour. At times it does do these things very well (in particular an outrageous encounter with an over-friendly office worker played by Matt Walsh) but often the deciding factor in the funniness of a scene is Donald Glover's delivery, which for the most part is decent enough but on a few occasions can be too exaggerated and kill what was an already weak joke to begin with. The premise of the man-child has been done to death in recent years, but by dragging its protagonists through strip clubs, murder investigations and grieving families, their naivety is tinted with higher levels of inappropriateness and callousness, the darker edge helping to extract more comedy out of the proceedings. There are certainly funny parts, and the film does boldly go for both-barrels rather than restraint - a perk of independent film-making that's definitely worth utilising. For a childish comedy film made on such a shoestring budget, the camerawork is impressively engaging, often opting for sweeping and moving continuous shots rather than alternating between static camera angles.
Glover's undoubtedly the funniest and does show a relative amount of range in his performance (although the more sentimental scenes are so awkward and tangential they feel as if they were added in with a crowbar), but the rest of the leading cast are a mixed bag. Dominic Dierkes is good for a few laughs but severely lacking in energy as the dumbest member of the crew; Aubrey Plaza is fine and makes an admirable effort but her role isn't interesting enough to allow her to do much, and D.C. Pierson is the weakest link, giving an over-the-top performance that lacks sufficient charm (or a script with sufficient nuance) to counter-balance. The darker elements of the film's plot do add some humorous contrast to the affairs but when considered by themselves they are ill-explained and nothing original.
Getting down to the brass tacks of judging a comedy, Mystery Team is funny in parts. More often than not it's something simple like a foul-mouthed eight year old, but the confidence and unabashed goofiness makes up for some of the shortcomings that stupidity provides. It's a decent, watchable film with a substantial number of amusing moments, but it's not essential or even particularly recommendable viewing, and given some of that people involved it's a little disappointing.
Glover's undoubtedly the funniest and does show a relative amount of range in his performance (although the more sentimental scenes are so awkward and tangential they feel as if they were added in with a crowbar), but the rest of the leading cast are a mixed bag. Dominic Dierkes is good for a few laughs but severely lacking in energy as the dumbest member of the crew; Aubrey Plaza is fine and makes an admirable effort but her role isn't interesting enough to allow her to do much, and D.C. Pierson is the weakest link, giving an over-the-top performance that lacks sufficient charm (or a script with sufficient nuance) to counter-balance. The darker elements of the film's plot do add some humorous contrast to the affairs but when considered by themselves they are ill-explained and nothing original.
Getting down to the brass tacks of judging a comedy, Mystery Team is funny in parts. More often than not it's something simple like a foul-mouthed eight year old, but the confidence and unabashed goofiness makes up for some of the shortcomings that stupidity provides. It's a decent, watchable film with a substantial number of amusing moments, but it's not essential or even particularly recommendable viewing, and given some of that people involved it's a little disappointing.
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