Mystery Team is the work of internet comedy group Derrick Comedy. They have made several YouTube sketches about a group of immature detective wannabes. Now they have put together a full-length version.
The Mystery Team is three emotionally stunted young men. When they were young, they set out to create a neighborhood detective agency, solving mysteries a la Encyclopedia Brown. One thinks himself a master of disguise. Another considers himself “the smartest boy in town.” The third imagines he is the “strongest boy in town.” In their mysteries, they play out these roles, but we know there is no truth to them.
Now high school seniors, they are still in many ways just like the boys they were when they started looking for lost marbles or discovering who stuck their finger in the pie. In fact, that is pretty much the same kind of mystery they continue to solve. The YouTube sketches often show them solving a mystery made of their own ignorance—ignorance that includes ignorance of all things sexual.
One day, a little girl asks them to find out who killed her parents. A real mystery! However, they know this is really beyond their skill set; but when one of the boys sees the girl’s older sister, he’s bound and determined to solve the crime and win her heart. And so off they go to discover a side of life they didn’t know existed and really aren’t prepared to deal with.
As they debate whether to take this case, they remember that it has always been their dream to be real detectives. And as one of them says, “Following your dream is never stupid.” Well, we all know that in this case it will be stupid—that is the whole premise of the film.
There are films that are so bad they are good. They often become our guilty pleasures. This film aspires to reach that level, but just misses. The set up is sufficient for humor to be expected, but rather than trying for any real humor, they go for cheap laughs—almost exclusively sexual or scatological. It’s not that I don’t think that kind of humor is funny, but it gets old very quickly. The film never progresses beyond a level of adolescent prurience. This leaves it with a pretty narrow target audience who will appreciate the film.
There is one level that the film might be said to work: as a coming-of-age film. Eventually, the boys begin to talk about what they will be doing next year. One of them hasn’t made the jump to thinking about after high school, but the other two have. We begin to see under the outward immaturity and find a bit of the young men that might begin to emerge if they (as the Apostle Paul phrases it) “put aside childish things.” It’s just that you have to wade through so much refuse to get to this minor redemption.
