“Encyclopedia Brown: The Case of the Missing Time Capsule” (1990)
I went to the New Beverly screening of Derrick Comedy’s Mystery Team last night. It’s pretty great. Make sure to track it down and watch it and memorize it and go as it next Halloween.
During the Q&A, along with The Hardy Boys, the group cited Encyclopedia Brown as the primary influence on their movie. I’m not sure whether they were talking about the books or the HBO series (here’s a promo from 1990), but I was heavily invested in the idea of being a junior detective, and both were a big part of my adorably precocious amateur training. And come to think of it, the movie really nailed the hazy primary-hued look and feel of the daytime HBO/Nickelodeon of the early 90s.
And this is not a knock on it, at all. It’s really well-shot. Almost the entire movie is long takes and complicated camera moves, and it’s a tribute to the Derrick guys (including Donald Glover, from my #1 favorite current TV comedy “Community”) and D.C. Pierson, Dominic Dierkes, director Dan Eckman and producer Meggie McFadden that all the jokes land right where they’re supposed to.
Add to that how inspiring it is that they basically funded the movie themselves (with a little outside help) because they just wanted to make a movie.
I feel like “Mystery Team” is a spiritual successor to, and comes from the same beautiful place that makes an undermarketed, eventual classic out of “Wet Hot American Summer” (2001). (Yes, I mean NYU. Go Violets.)
