Mystery, Alaska Reviews

Ever since I saw the previews for it a couple of years ago, I knew I had to see "Mystery, Alaska." One thing that surprised me was that my mom even liked it and she HATES watching any kind of sports. Another thing, I haven't ever been that much of a hockey fan myself. In my whole life, I probably haven't watched enough hockey to account for more than two whole NHL games. I'm an NBA and MLB fan instead. However, I liked "Mystery, Alaska" A LOT!
An amateur, but very skilled hockey team from a small town in Alaska called Mystery, get national attention after a former resident writes an article praising them. Surprisingly, this earns the now not so mysterious team from Mystery, Alaska, a game against THE New York Rangers. Will the Mystery team that is led by the town sheriff (Russell Crowe) and is coached by the town's strict judge (Burt Reynolds), have a chance against professionals who get paid millions of dollars to play the game they love?

Let me make it short, I have never been a hockey fan in my life, but I really enjoyed this movie a lot, and my mom doesn't like any sports, and she even liked it. Even if you're not a hockey fan in the least sense or even a sports fan, give "Mystery, Alaska" a shot. It doesn't have any spectacular special effects or anything fancy, and that's good because it didn't need it. But let me tell you, this movie never gets boring the whole time and it features great acting from everybody, especially Burt Reynolds and Russell Crowe. NOTE: That was my Amazon review from the year 2001. I liked this movie and I don't even like hockey.

I love ice-hockey in comedy film since Slap Shot and The Mighty Ducks series, but this is a hilarious tale of romance, passion and the ultimate power play.

It was the usual sports movie. The underdog takes on the top dog.

very good movie

I liked it.

Here's a mystery for you: "Why are sports movies so boring?" Oh wait, that's no mystery. The reason is that sports, in general are boring enough without someone trying to back it up with whatever dramatic storyline you can possibly relate to the sport at hand. I can't believe that no one is doing a sports drama that deals with parkinson's, which is more compelling and realistic than most of the stuff these people come up with. I don't care if you think your wife doesn't love you just because she laughed at her high school boyfriend, Russell. Ironically, this film really isn't that boring. Hey, it's all paced pretty smoothly to me after "Tin Cup", which was basically over 2 hours of Kevin Costner doing pretty much nothing other than lightly tapping a ball into a hole with a club.

But seriously though, while the film is certainly more exciting than most sports flicks, it does still have slow spots and like most slow films, it's vulnerable to other flaws. Here, these flaws include a mild lack of development, a somewhat inconsistant sense of humor, a deal of fall-flat jokes, some vile dialogue, (I'm not a whimp, I'm just saying that what Crowe's character's wife sarcastically said to express her excitement about the town getting a Zamboni was some ol' high school freshman bull) a bit of an out-of-place score, ceesiness, melodrama, forced plot points, predictability, a lot of cliches and an atmosphere that's too clean for the mature content. Still, as flawed as the film is, it remains pretty decent. For this, we have to thank a decent storyline, some nice cenimatography, fair performances and a solid and heartwarming ending, Hallmark-tastic though it may be. Ultimately, "Mystery, Alaska" is a cliched, melodramatic and gratuitously mature mess, but the well-ended story and performances are compelling enough to make it a decent watch.

Mystery Alaska, where you can ice skate to school or ride your snowmobile or go roll around naked in the snow and then jump in the hot tub (you know you want to do it!). The biggest thing that goes on in this town is Hockey. Every sunday, the best players in town (voted on by the city council) play schoolyard hockey on natural ice with the whole town watching. They don't get paid, but they get a certain noteriety and status in the town if you are good enough to play. Russel Crowe plays the town sheriff/team captian when (as a result of a sports illustrated column) a former resident and former bf of Crowe's wife shows up and sets up a exhibition game with the town team against an actual professional team (Rangers). The town goes apeshit and the team starts kicking ass to get in shape to try and pull off the "Any given Sunday" scenario. The results damn near tear the team and town apart until the game actually arrives. Crowe and Burt Reynolds (as the coach) are great and the results are fun to watch. Recommended.

ok hockey movie one of the few times rusell crowe didnt get on my nerves

A great Hockey film.

besides slapshot, this is one of the all-time best hockey movies out there. although the town seemed sort of unrealistic in that people iceskated everywhere and everyone was amazing at hockey it was still a great hockey movie. the characters were perfect and the game agaisnt the rangers was very cool! it was sort of odd to see russel crow as the captain of the hockey team becuase i was ready for him to lead the hockey players in a revolt agaisnt the roman gladiators. i would have rather seen different actors in the movie but the ones that were in it still did a good job protraying alaskans in a small town. Hank Azaria's character annoyed me, and im not sure if he was meant to do that or not, and so did mike myers character. i thought it was a great serious movie and had comedy aspects in perfect parts of the movie, like skank the guy on the team who slept around all the time, including the mayor's wife, which later, took a comedy aspect and turned it into a serious part of the movie with the perfect transition. the ending was sad at first but after a few minutes took a more supportive and fufilling ending.

Mystery, Alaska is a happy little film about a small town in Alaska that lives for the sport of hockey. Their children practically get raised up on ice skates, and the town lives for its weekly hockey game where their team divides up to play against itself. The town council decides who gets to play on the team, with a big league's eye to who is on the way up and who is on the way out. When a former resident writes an article for Sports Illustrated magazine about the team, the NHL decides to bring in the New York Rangers for an exhibition game. The town's reaction, the interplay of the townspeople, and of course the big game itself is what comprises the story. Russell Crowe's hulky presence and expressive eyes compensate for the rather dull sheriff Biebe character. Ron Eldard is wonderfully lighthearted and fun as the big, dumb, eternally philandering Skank Marden. Hank Azaria effectively assumes the jerky Jeff Goldblum-ish role of an opportunistic writer, while Burt Reynolds adds credibility to the part of the crabby-but-loveable Judge Burns. The best performance, however, belongs to veteran character actor Maury Chaykin as the town's stammering, deeply passionate defense lawyer Bailey Pruitt. Also contributing in guest bits are Mike Myers as a sleazy network sportscaster and Little Richard, hilarious with his unending rendition of the National Anthem.

This was fun, especially as a hockey fan. I was somewhat disappointed with the ending, but you can understand why it was done how it was done.

I wasn't sure whether or not to give this 3 stars or only 2. But the deciding factor, tipping it into the liked rather than disliked ranking was the courtroom scene. In the preview the lawyer says, "Well, forgive me your Honor, I'm fat." I thought that was funny, but when I saw the movie and there was absolutely no more context than that, I thought it was hilarious.

A small town hockey fan's dream...Very enjoyable for anyone that enjoys the game even better if you ever grew up wanting to be a hockey star.

Being a former Alaskan myself, I just couldn't watch it all the way through. It's movies like this that make tourists believe we all live in igloos and we all have dog sled teams. I mean, come on. Can we get a real movie filmed up there, that shows that summers not only exist, but they're beautiful and warm? Yes, the winter's are brutal, but they're not as unbearable as most films make them out to be. Wasn't this movie made in Canada anyway? Figures. No one has the balls to film out in 60 below.

I love this movie. Sure, it has that forced feel good situation at the end, but Russell Crowe plays hockey for a few minutes. I can't knock that.

If you love hockey, like I do, then you'll probably like this movie. It's a good story that really doesn't sugarcoat everything to make you feel good, it just tells a pretty good story.

This movie is once again about hockey and yet has a lot of great funny humor in it as well. You can't go wrong with a movie that deals with hockey and a bunch of kids who make up their own team and go on and play against the New York Rangers. That would be like a dream come true. How could you go wrong?

Yet another underdog story, but this one is better than the rest, and is really much more than just that.

A box office bomb that really isnt that bad of a movie. Not really about hockey but people pulling and working together for the common cause.