2 out of 5

Director: Dan Eckman

Mystery Team is comedy thats trying to go somewhere, but never really achieves its goal. These are kids – smart kids, and clever – who have grown up in the self-referential culture that breeds Jimmy Fallons but with the desire to pursue comedy into that extraneous territory – random, strange, challenging humor – that has bred the geniuses of the genre. But it seems they still have a long ways to go. Mystery Team is the first outing by Derrick Comedy, an NY group who made many many Youtube videos. And the Youtube videos are a good indication of the humor on display in the film – jokes with great premises, with almost great execution, that simply have no sense of build or scope. MT is about three high-schoolers who were famous in their town when they were 7 for solving mysteries. Now… not so much, even though theyre still taking cases for lost kittens and pie-fingering thieves. And the humor is in playing off of the trios innocence in face of solving a real crime – a murder, a case they accept in the hopes of getting back some fame. Master of disguise glover is excellent and scene stealing. DC Pierson is sort of the straight man, and does a great job of acting his role as it should be. Mr. Dierkes, the muscle of the group, has some funny lines but seems out of place, not fully acting but seeming more like hes in on the joke the whole time. I dont know. Theres a lot of potential here. But the fact that some really hilarious scenes are bogged down by being dragged out makes it a bummer. Itll be interesting to see where these guys go from here.