Product Description
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With Russell Crowe (THE INSIDER, A BEAUTIFUL MIND), Hank Azaria
(GODZILLA, THE BIRD CAGE), and Burt Reynolds leading an
incredible all-star cast, here's a fun, uplifting, action-packed
story that everyone will love! A remote hockey-obsessed town
populated by 633 of the most eccentric characters you'd ever want
to meet, Mystery is the kind of place where nothing ever changes.
But then life as they know it gets turned completely upside down!
When a publicity stunt brings the world-famous New York Rangers
-- and the national spotlight -- to Mystery for a game with the
local team of weekend warriors, the whole town rises to meet the
challenge of a lifetime! Also starring Mary McCormack (TRUE
CRIME, DEEP IMPACT) and Lolita Davidovich (PLAY IT TO THE ,
JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE) in another critical favorite from the hit-making
director of AUSTIN POWERS 1&2 -- you'll stand and cheer as this
ragtag bunch shows that nothing can melt their dreams of a
miracle on ice!
.com
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When it comes to the subject of community, David E. Kelley--the
prolific writer-producer behind television's The Practice and
Ally McBeal--falls somewhere on a continuum between directors
Howard Hawks and Robert Benton. While Hawks's professional
characters are bound by a knowledge of how to do what they do
even if they don't know why, Benton's people, professional or
not, have long ago substituted their own eccentric reasons for
that elusive why. Thus we get the kind of in-house, oddball
rituals sandwiched between passages of actual work on Ally, and
the affectionately entangled personal and professional ties
between small-town folks in Kelley's earlier TV series Picket
Fences.
Kelley's script for Mystery, Alaska (co-authored by Sean
O'Byrne) takes that level of eccentricity to a geographical and
spiritual extreme. The film revives the hackneyed Rocky formula,
setting a lopsided hockey match within a remote, self-contained
hamlet where the members of a tiny population all have to wear
multiple hats and still keep neighborly ties intact. The story
concerns the town's chief source of identity and pride: so-called
"Saturday games," in which local men divide into teams and play
pond hockey for the locals. When a prodigal son (Hank Azaria) of
Mystery shows up with a television network offer to bring the New
York Rangers in for a televised match against the homegrown team,
the town hers agree. Coaching falls to the town sheriff, John
Biebe (Russell Crowe), an admirable man and a longtime player
recently bumped from the team. John, however, doesn't want the
job: everyone knows the real coach in those parts is Judge Burns
(Burt Reynolds), but he wants no part of it either. All of that
changes after a sad tragedy forces everyone to reevaluate their
positions and pull together in order to beat the Rangers.
Following the success of Austin Powers: International Man of
Mystery, Jay Roach proves to be an able director of drama, swift
action, and low-key, character-driven comedy not unlike that in
Benton's Nobody's Fool. He has to deal with some pure corn at the
end, but Roach pulls it off and guides the actors to and through
far better moments. --Tom Keogh