Mystery Men review

A superhero's lot is not an easy one. If you're lucky, the pressures of secrecy, dual identity and lack of sleep may only be compounded by a spot of blue pantarama; if not, it's the whole tortured psyche shredding at the edges deal.

But still, there's nothing quite like a lone, costumed crime-fighter to quell the hordes of megalomaniac villainy. Which is where Champion City has run into a bit of a problem. Because it only has one personification of dastardliness: Casanova Frankenstein (Geoffrey Rush). And loads of super heroes. Admittedly, most of them are rubbish, but since the sole genuine article, Captain Amazing (Greg Kinnear), slapped Frankenstein into top security lock-up, they share a common dilemma: no crime to fight.

For crusading wannabes Mr Furious (Ben Stiller), The Blue Raja (Hank Azaria) and The Shoveler (William H Macy), this means zero opportunity to unleash their questionable powers and make a name for themselves; for Captain Amazing, it means Pepsi might pull their lucrative endorsement contract.

And that's why Amazing hits on a rather dubious plan. Free Casanova Frankenstein and have a worthy adversary to battle once more. And never has a plan backfired so badly since a furry man called Renard was assigned chicken-feeding duties down on Nursery Rhyme Farm.

A colourful, ramshackle affair based on the Flaming Carrot/Mystery Men series in Dark Horse Comics, this is a perfectly pitched fantasy pastiche.

In essence, it's a spoof, but one which only winks on the outside, otherwise playing its internal set-up straight and without tiresome L**lie N**lsen-style mugging.

And it launches just the sort of superhero posers you always wanted answering: how can billionaire Lance Hutton be Captain Amazing? Captain Amazing doesn't wear glasses.

With their numbers bolstered by new recruits The Bowler (Janeane Garofalo), The Spleen (Paul Reubens), Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell) and presided over by mysterious guru The Sphinx (We Studi), Stiller, Azaria and Macy still manage to give their hapless trio prominence.

And rightly so, as all three are on top of their respective games - Azaria playing very off-the-wall; Macy doing his superb, downtrodden everyman turn and Stiller producing that blend of ferocious enthusiasm and crippling confidence crisis.

All this is carried out amid a busy ensemble which sees Kinnear and Rush offering great value too, and even encompasses Eddie Izzard and former Fugee Praz Michel as Frankenstein's disco-villain henchmen Tony P and Tony C.

With its surreal and flashy set design, the whole shooting match might well have ranked as a triumph of style over content, if - in the shape of this galaxy of actors and a well-worked script - there hadn't been quite so much content jostling for attention.