Mystery Team (2010)

Tagline: No case too hard. No case too tough.

Curiosity: It’s a movie starring and co-written by Donald Glover, of Community and 30 Rock fame. Dude throws out brilliant one-liners like they’re spare change. AND it’s got some other familiar faces from NBC (Aubrey Plaza, Bobby Moynihan, Kevin Brown).

Plot: While they were once the top case crackers of the school yard, Jason (Glover), Duncan (DC Pierson), and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) are now the laughingstocks of their high school. The Mystery Team is still reliant on the same bag of tricks from their childhood years when it comes to solving mysteries. And while they certainly know how to rescue a pie and stop fifth grade bullies, solving a double homicide is another matter.

Thoughts: I wanted Mystery Team to be so much better. No offense to the writing team behind Derrick Comedy, who created the movie, but I really wanted confirmation that Glover was the Next Big Thing in Comedy. Mystery Team, which he wrote and certainly carries, implies that he might need a few more years gestating. I get the impression his best lines were improvised, as the jokes pertaining to the plot – teens acting like Encyclopedia Brown in the real world! – fall flat. The movie ends up having a heavy Brady Bunch Movie vibe, where it basically just makes fun of squares. It’s a parody/homage to children’s mysteries – Brown, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew – but it struggles to make that idea fill a movie. Besides, Venture Bros. has been nailing this angle for years.

For a while, though, Mystery Team balances the title characters’ innocence/ridiculousness with the harsher tone of reality, and even gets a few laughs out of it. But eventually it runs out of jokes and settles for gross-out humor on par with an American Pie sequel. Glover still does great work on Community, but his scripts need work.

Reflection: Fuck. I should have rented this movie instead of buying it.