REVIEW: Mystery Team

Oftentimes, when deciding what to watch for this blog, I'll select a movie I've been intending to watch for some time but have never gotten around to. Other times, I'll revisit an old favorite to see if there's anything new to be gleaned. And other times, I'll just pop onto Netflix and mash play on the first thing that looks mildly interesting, such as with this week's viewing, Mystery Team. 

Created by and starring the Derrick Comedy trio (Donald Glover, Dominick Dierkes, and DC Pierson), the movie follows the titular Mystery Team, a would-be detective agency run by a trio of pals who never outgrew their passion for solving neighborhood mysteries. It's essentially a Venture Bros-esque take on franchises like The Hardy Boys and The Babysitter's Club; what if these precocious kids were in modern-day high school, but still spent their free time finding lost pets and kidnapped dollies? As if the anachronistic contrast of Little Rascals-style antics in contemporary suburbia wasn't enough, the gang is faced with a new case that's more than a little outside of their wheelhouse when a neighborhood girl (Daphne Ciccarelle) asks them to find out who murdered her parents. What follows is an irreverent comedy sketch that lasts about an hour and a half.

It's worth noting that, as if it wasn't already obvious, this movie essentially runs off of one joke; that these dorky, squeaky-clean dweebs who usually rescue marbles from storm drains are tasked with investigating a grisly double-homicide. As one might expect, this is something of a double-edged sword. Sometimes it works phenomenally well (such as whenever Donald Glover attempts to use disguises and fake personas to sneak into areas of interest) and other times it falls flat (such as when DC Pierson's character explains how he drank dog urine in an attempt to rid himself of bacteria). It's a single recurring joke that, to the film's credit, usually works out pretty effectively. The natures of these characters lend themselves well to individual scenes, which can play out more or less like sequential sketches. You can dump the trio of naive protagonists in, say, a seedy gentlemen's club, and it more or less writes itself. It's when the film has to stop being a series of amusing setpieces and focus on plot that it tends to slow down and fumble, turning totally generic at the absolute worst. The entire thing starts off with this genuinely weird, laugh-out-loud sense of energy that it just can't keep up for the entirety of its runtime. As I said, it's a joke that usually works, but it's the moments where it doesn't that drag this film down and keep it from being something really special.

That said, I do have to applaud the spirit of this film; it's entirely unashamed of how outright silly it is and appears to have an immense amount of fun with itself. This strikes me as one of those projects where everyone involved had a blast while making it. I imagine a lot of improv and laughter shared over table reads and on set. I also get the sense that this is the kind of project that is funnier to the people who made it than it is to the audience, but that feeling of earnestness still manages to come through in the end result. As I said, this is basically a 90-minute comedy sketch. It's the kind of thing that would never fly with a major studio and works very well within that "improv troupe" mindset. While it's not perfect, I can at least appreciate the originality of the concept and how well that concept was realized, considering what a small-scale production this was. It's irreverent and goofy, from time to time it's outright stupid, but it still gave me a genuine laugh at several points throughout its runtime. 

At the end of it all, I'm left with the question of whether or not I would recommend anyone watch Mystery Team. Admittedly, I'm a little torn. On one hand, it's definitely not for everyone. There's an abundance of "dumb" humor, laden with poop and swearing and vomit. That said, all of that dumb humor is delivered by very smart comedians, all with impeccable senses of timing and tone. It didn't always hit for me, but when it did I was left cackling like a lunatic. Like a lot of comedy, I feel like Mystery Team is just one of those things that comes down to a matter of taste. I could very easily see someone having a ball with this, but I can also see someone finding it to be a completely mindless waste of time. Going off of the premise alone, you can probably discern where you lie on that spectrum; I find myself somewhere in the middle. I had my fun with Mystery Team, but I'm not sure I'll ever feel the need to watch it again. Take that as you will.