Specials, The

• USA • 2000 • 82m •

• Directed by: Craig Mazin. • Starring: Jordan Ladd, Rob Lowe, Jamie Kennedy, Mike Schwartz, Thomas Haden Church, Paget Brewster, Kelly Coffield Park, Sean Gunn, Judy Greer, James Gunn, Jim Zulevic, Johnny Mountain, John Doe. • Music by: Brian Langsbard.

America's 7th Best Superhero Team, the Specials, are a group of geeks and oddballs. We get to see one day in their lives as fan and new member Nightbird joins the group, just in time for the group to get a new line of action figures. But the members' extreme personalities and personal issues threaten to rip the group apart.

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2:38

Review:

I just watched The Specials (for at least the 17th time) and decided to get online and read reviews on it. I expected to find a bunch of reviewers raving about the fantasticality of this movie. (The reviews for 'The Cutting Edge' were outstanding, and, well...) Anyway, I was shocked to see so many negative reviews about this amazing film! The good reviews I thought were right on target. It amazes me that so many people equate a good movie with the amount of money in the action and special effects budget. (But then again...Men In Black made a lot of money, and that's all it had going for it.) I think it's a funny thing that the characters' makeup was poorly and inconsistently applied and that most of the movie takes place in an average house. I contend that the poor makeup application was deliberate, and that the lack of action sequences was a joke on all of those people who can't look past them. I had a really hard time sitting through Mystery Men. The plot was paper thin and I kept wishing they'd quit those horrible fight scenes and something would actually happen. The Specials isn't really about superheroes being superheroes, but superheroes being real people. (I mean, they even have Real World style confessional tapings. The whole idea of them is ridiculous, but the characters take them seriously.) The fact that the superheroes take everything so seriously is the source of a lot of the movie's humor.

I think the writing and the acting in this movie are both superb. Mystery Men was a silly children's movie, but The Specials is a silly movie for grownups. Thomas Haden Church, Jamie Kennedy, and James Gunn (the latter of which also wrote the movie) all played their roles perfectly. The humor is so subtle, yet so obvious. It is really hard to keep a straight face when Thomas Haden Church is acting seriously. You can tell the actors had a blast making this movie, and that is really contagious.

I'm glad they never fought anybody, although it would have been very interesting. Fight scenes get boring when you try to watch them more than once, but The Specials is interesting from start to finish.

I apologize if I offended any fans of The Cutting Edge, Men In Black, and Mystery Men. They are just not my cup of tea.

Good movies are getting rarer and rarer, and The Specials is a fantastic movie.

Review by nadasurf53 from the Internet Movie Database.

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