In a warped way, it’s now comforting to see our childhood heroes be every bit as deranged and disappointed as we are, as adults, with the real world. Like The Venture Brothers’ sense of a future gone horribly mundane, DERRICK Comedy’s debut feature Mystery Team turns childhood dreams into a darkly funny hypothetical: what if you never bothered to move past them?

Premiering earlier this year at Sundance, Team focuses on the titular trio who, originally their town’s plucky mascots, forgot to grow out of their adorable roles of Jason the Boy Genius (DC Pierson), Duncan the Strongest Kid on the Block (Dominic Dierkes) and Charlie the Master of Disguise (Donald Glover). Of course their achievements never get past childish levels –– the genius can only recite quirky facts, the strongest kid can’t lift a dumbbell and the Master of Disguise relies on silly mustaches and sombreros to pass as a gentleman or a plumber. Annoyed that they’re not taken as “seriously” as they once were, the chocolate milk-drinking group find a silver lining when a little girl asks them to solve the mystery of who killed her parents.

“The germ of the idea was Donald,” said DC Pierson, who also co-wrote and produced the film, outside of the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theater in New York last Thursday. Basically driving on the point of ‘what if Encyclopedia Brown grew up in the real world,’ “we all got really excited about it. We had been saving up money to make this bigger project and this felt like something we could move forward with.”

“The premise immediately lent itself to ideas and a story arc,” said Dan Eckman, who handles the directing for all of DERRICK’s shorts as well. This is the first feature from a group whose shorts (such as New Bike, where unexpected consequences occur for said bike, or KP, which starts out like a happy-go-lucky music video and then ends in something so dark you can’t help but cackle) mainly rely on three-minute punchlines and extremely dark humor. And there are parts in the film that stand out just as well, such as when Duncan intones “That’s just what Dad says,” after the team decide not to go to the police, or when a drunk joker at a corporate party is told, “Sometimes I wish you didn’t beat cancer.”

At 97 minutes, the film is a hair shorter than what had previously been screened at Sundance; even in praising the film, some critics noted the length as a bit much. “Going into Sundance, we really weren’t able to show it to anyone at all,” said Eckman. “Once you show a real movie to a real audience in a critical theater, you know that’s the movie; that’s where we can go in to tighten and fix.”

Mystery Team screened twice, plus the impromptu show at UCB, in New York last week for free — and each time, turning groups of fans away and promising there would be more opportunities. The film screens Tuesday night at 9 p.m. in Los Angeles for free with first-come, first-serve tickets. The motivation for continuing this bi-coastal screening schedule comes a partially from the group’s own online background: “We’re used to, if we film a sketch and put it online, [we] get that instant gratification. For the movie, we finished it for Sundance and this is the first time we’re actually screening it,” said Dierkes.

“It is a more delayed situation that you have to be patient with,” said Pierson.

While Mystery Team has its kinks, they’re overshadowed by the quick nature of DERRICK, the team’s ability to leap from joke to joke, rarely stooping to pure gross-out (okay, maybe it happens three or four times). The film’s best moments are the subtle interactions and acidic one-liners that show up when you start to wonder if it is just dragging along. Following that are stand-out roles from New York comedy mainstays like Matt Walsh (UCB), Ben Schwartz and Bobby Moynihan (SNL) as Jordy, the sad convenience store worker who used to give the Team ice cream after a successfully solved mystery. It’s perfect if you’re familiar with the group’s online presence, but more so if you’re looking for a diversion from the current malaise of Apatow comedy.

“We’re seeing that this movie has a much wider audience than just our sketch fans,” said Dierkes.