What if "Encyclopedia Brown" grew up and was still solving mysteries for a dime? Well, you'll find out what it's like in Derrick Comedy's new movie, which premiered Friday at Regal Cinema 14 in Butler Plaza.
The five-man comedy group, which has been writing and performing sketches since 2005, created a feature-length film called "Mystery Team," a comedy about three friends who solve mysteries in their sleepy little town.
The members of the team, portrayed by Donald Glover, Dominic Dierkes and D.C. Pierson, dress like children and talk in an outlandish retro-50s "Gee whiz" speech.
These quirky characters soon get mixed up in a double homicide, much different from their usual "Encyclopedia Brown" fare, and the movie progresses into a series of situation comedy scenes.
Derrick Comedy's Youtube videos are of the same variety, and have become Internet sensations over the years.
"We started basically recording the sketches we had written and were performing live," said DC Pierson, one of the writers. "We wanted to post them online and Youtube was relatively new at the time."
The troupe put this movie together from beginning to end on their own, with no Hollywood influence.
"We pitched a script to a bunch of Hollywood [movie] studios, which rejected it because we were untested filmmakers," Pierson said. "We went back and came up with a new idea and script (Mystery Team), which we immediately fell in love with, and we decided we should produce this ourselves."
The film premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
Pierson described the experience as one of the best nights of their lives.
The movie is expected to attain a wider release in October, depending on its success in Gainesville and Tallahassee, where another screening was occurring at the same time.
Following the wide release, the troupe will release a DVD through Lionsgate.
"We're planning some weird and funny stuff," said Dan Eckman, director and editor of the film. "We're thinking of a boner track that will play whenever someone in the scene has a boner. It'll be hilarious, if only to us."
