Good start, but then it gets ruined

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I stumbled upon this film years ago and due to the recent popularity of a review I wrote, I decided to write reviews for films that deserve praise. I had always been a fan of Donald Glover, I can't pinpoint exactly when I discovered him but I think it was around the time his special "Weirdo" came out. Through the help of IMDb I discovered he was in a film called "Mystery Team." It was available for free on Hulu so I decided to give it a shot...And I laughed my buttocks off! I honestly have not laughed harder at a movie than I did when I was watching Mystery Team. DERRICK comedy delivered a hilarious screenplay and well-executed acting. This film may not be for anyone though. The target audience is likely men ages 18-30. Which is why I think it's ratings might be skewed a bit but it is definitely worth the watch. It is full of unpredictable laughs right until the very last scene.thefilmclerk.wordpress.com

I enjoyed the ultra-low budget "Mystery Team" a whole lot, just like I enjoyed the equally low budget comedy "The Foot Fist Way." The concept is a great one--three grown men who used to be a locally famous mystery solving team when they were kids (like Mystery Incorporated or the Hardy Boys) but who never grew out of it. The jokes and the story are funny, but the premise isn't set up early enough in the story. It seems to me like a whole opening segment is missing--one that showed the Mystery Team as children solving at least one kiddie mystery and becoming famous for it. The refer to this history quite frequently, but it's never explicitly shown or explained. If you didn't already know (by reading a synopsis or the box) then you might be a bit lost the first half hour or so. But still, a pretty amazing job for a zero-budget comedy.UPDATE: I just watched the DVD with the commentary and learned that just such an opening sequence as I described above was filmed--one that showed the Mystery Team as kids, wearing the same clothes and everything. The Derrik people explained that "it just didn't work." Now I'm even more disappointed! It's even worse that this CRUCIAL SEQUENCE did indeed exist, and they actually edited it out! That's right--they purposely edited out the set-up to the high-concept joke that is the basis for the entire story! It's tantamount to editing out the first 30 minutes of "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" because you don't think it's all that important to show the audience that he was a wacky guy who time traveled from the sixties. (he's still funny, right?)Mystery Team would have made TWICE as much money ($10k?) if they had included the set up to their hour and a half joke. Coulda been a "10" instead of a "7." What an f up!

Derrick Comedy have been known over the last couple of years for their offbeat, quirky and sometimes very unorthodox ways of getting a laugh out of its key demographic, which is safe to assume is mostly made up of teenagers, mostly boys, but it would be wrong of me to think girls weren't fans too.After a comedy group becomes big, it becomes the norm to create some kind of outlet to show your fans how much you love them, and what better way than to create a movie. Lorne Michaels and the Saturday Night Live "Not yet ready for Prime Time Players" did it, Monty Python did it, and while we have yet to see the Whitest Kids U' Know touch base with us on that (and no, Miss March does not count), we have "Mystery Team", a very clever, sometimes bordering on outright disgusting movie.Picture if you will, The Hardy Boys trying to hide their own 5 O'clock shadows from each other or Encyclopedia Brown trying to figure out what exactly happened to the punch bowl at the high school dance, and you could kind of place what this movie is trying to be.Three kids, who dubbed themselves the Mystery Team as kids, solve the town's big mysteries, like where is the missing cat, or who shoved their finger into a fresh baked pie, but get handed their biggest mystery when a young girl asks the team to find out who murdered her parents.Of course, the guys get involved and approach this situation as serious as a heart attack. On the surface, this movie might sound cliché and familiar, ala the Andy Samberg 2006 picture, Hot Rod. However, it would be a disservice to persuade you that they are the same movie. While they are similar in many ways, Mystery Team has something that feels a little more genuine. Hot Rod had a character who thought he could do it all, and the movie had many over the top scenes. Mystery Team is grounded in enough reality to make you realize that none of this could be pulled off by a couple of less than street wise kid detectives, and the movie makes you fully aware of it.However, in this grounding, it makes the characters have some kind of background. Not a fully recognized background, but something for you to work with. Being a handful of high school kids who really never grew up kind of rings funny, but everybody around them knows they are just trying to hold on to whatever youth they have left, a defense mechanism to help themselves prove they are still important.The movie is met with some flaws, the characters are never truly fleshed out and become more or less, cardboard cutouts of what kids think is heroic, but when you were a kid and you invented you're own persona, did you really think beyond "Super Smart" or "Super Tough"? Even in this case, it still works.Typical in most comedies too is a joke that doesn't work here and there, but it is for the most part, consistently funny.I would say if the plot is enough for you or you need a dumb funny laugh, look no further than the Mystery Team.8/10.

Derrick Comedy are on the brink of being the next comedy wave...hell in a lot of ways they already are with their shorts. Every other person involved with DC seems to be getting big time roles in major TV shows like Community to The Office...but we aren't reviewing their worth to the comedy scene as a whole we are reviewing their debut feature length film, Mystery Team.There is a lot of promise in this movie, and some heartfelt laughs, but it might have been a tad to much for DC to handle with such little funds (as far as movies go) and lack of SCREEN WRITING experience and as the movie goes on the weaknesses turn from paper cuts to gaping wounds. DC tend to fall into a rut where they cant think of a funny situation to throw in the movie with the premise given so they throw in some misplaced fart, or rape, or poop jokes, and that coupled with weak acting leads to disastrous gaps in comedy. The performances of the stronger actors in the film like Donald Glover, and Aubrey Plaza (Who from what I know isn't affiliated with DC outside this movie) seem pulled down by their weaker counterparts, and one can only a assume a few more shorts and a drama class or two couldn't have hurt them in preparation for such a major project.Mystery Team does have to be taken with a grain of salt though. The movie is far from void of laughs, and at the end of the day it was 3 guys making a movie they envisioned and even though they I'm sure they'll even admit it was harder then they expected, it seems like they had a hell of a good time doing it.On some lesser but still major faults Donald Glovers score is horrible, and the screenplay in itself has some serious drags in it, I know I keep bringing it up but people should know how important it is to keep a comedy going, moving and moving if there isn't A situation a joke could be going into, there should be plot development not just hit or miss one liners, that in this case often miss.Im excited for the future of every main character in this movie....but as for Mystery Team as a whole a have to call it a lackluster movie with a heavy dose of one shot laughs.