Mystery Team Review
By: T.J. “oh fuck, the Mystery Team” Mulligan
Derrick Comedy has been a common term thrown around amongst my group of friends for some time now. Their online shorts are never short of being wildly absurd and always guaranteed to be funny. I have spent many a night on their Youtube page watching different sketches over and over, cracking up at each one and finding new reasons to laugh at them time and again. Their abilities as comedic talents have garnered them various writing and acting jobs, the most notable of which is Donald Glover who not only wrote for 30 Rock but also stars as part of the fantastic ensemble on Community. When I read online sometime last year that they had a feature-length movie coming out, I knew I had to see it. I haven’t heard much about it since then until the other day when it appeared on my Netflix Instant. I knew I was in for some laughs, but wondered if their irreverent brand of humor could last for an entire 90 minute movie.
Mystery Team is about a group of friends who, as children, started a junior detective agency called the mystery team. The team consists of Jason (Donald Glover), the master of disguise, Duncan (D.C. Pierson), the boy genius and Charlie (Dominic Dierkes) the strongest kid in town. The Mystery Team, as they called themselves, are grown up now, 18 years old and seniors in high school. They still act as though they were young and still run their detective agency from a stand in Jason’s front yard, despite the mockery of everyone in town. One day they are approached by a little girl named Brianna (Daphne Ciccarelle) to solve a new mystery… the double homicide of both of her parents. Brianna’s sister Kelly (Aubrey Plaza) comes to usher the misguided child away, but the Mystery Team accepts. Of course they are in way over their heads, but a mixture of gumption and naivety spurns them on.
If you’ve ever watched a Derrick Comedy video before than you know generally what type of humor to expect. There are plenty of jokes playing off conventions of child detective stories, basically seeing what would happen if Encyclopedia Brown was placed into the middle of a real crime involving drugs, sex and murder. Some of the jokes are completely telegraphed, but it is a credit to the performers themselves that they are able to still keep it funny.
The movie was made on a very small budget and it shows, but the crew did very well with what they had. The supporting work of Bobby Moynihan as Jordy, the slightly suicidal convenience store clerk who desperately wants to be a part of the team is terrific, but Plaza seemed to just phone in her performance as Kelly, spending more time trying not to laugh at the happenings around her than contributing much of her own. It’s hard to fault a low budget film like this for not fully delivering in all aspects, but that’s just what Mystery Team does (or doesn’t). However, the comedic performances at play here kept me laughing consistently and make me anxious to see what they can do with a different idea and (hopefully) a bigger budget.
I give Mystery Team 3 glasses of chocolate milk out of 5.
