Roger Ebert started his review by saying, ““The Master
of Disguise” pants and wheezes and hurls itself exhausted across the finish
line after barely 65 minutes of movie, and then follows it with 15 minutes of
end credits in an attempt to clock in as a feature film. We get outtakes,
deleted scenes, flubbed lines and all the other versions of the Credit Cookie,
which was once a cute idea but is getting to be a bore.”
The credits just keep going continuously. Ebert
described, “The movie is like a party guest who thinks he is funny and is
wrong. The end credits are like the same guest taking too long to leave. At one
point they at last mercifully seemed to be over, and the projectionist even
closed the curtains, but no:” Dana Carvey starts asking the viewers why we’re
still watching the film. That is the worst question to ask after a movie like “The
Master of Disguise.” I agree with Ebert when he said, “The movie is a desperate
miscalculation.” Dana Carvey is given nothing to do that is funny, and then
expects us to laugh because he acts so silly the whole time. However, acting
funny is not funny. Acting in a situation that’s funny – that’s funny.
The plot: Carvey plays an Italian waiter named
Pistachio Disguisey, who is unfamiliar with the First Law of Funny Names, which
is that funny names in movies are rarely funny. Pistachio comes from a huge
family of masters of disguise. His father, Frabbrizio, played by Josh Brolin’s
father, James Brolin, having finished his career by successfully impersonating
Bo Derek, retires and opens a New York restaurant. He doesn’t tell his son
about the family talent, but then, he gets kidnapped by his old enemy Bowman
(Brent Spiner), Pistachio is told the family secret by his grandfather (Harold
Gould).
Grandfather also gives him a lesson in disguise-craft
after locating Frabbrizio’s hidden workshop in the attic (a Disguisey’s
workshop, we see, is known as a nest). Ebert noted, “There is now a scene
representative of much of the movie, in which Pistachio puts on an inflatable
suit, and it suddenly balloons so that he flies around the room and knocks over
granddad.” That scene may seem funny to really little kids, like infants.
Carvey is from the vaudevillian time of
impressionists, and during the film we see him as a human turtle, Al Pacino
from “Scarface,” Robert Shaw from “Jaws,” a man in a cherry suit, a man with a cow
pie for a face, George W. Bush, and many other disguises. In some cases, the
disguises are handled by using a double and then using digital technology to
make it appear as if the double’s face is a latex mask that can be removed. In other
cases, such as Bush, he just imitates him.
The plot helpfully gives Pistachio with a girl named
Jennifer, played by the beautiful Jennifer Esposito, who becomes his sidekick
when searching for Frabbrizio, and they visit so many vast locations. Ebert
said, “One of them is a secret headquarters where Bowman keeps his priceless
trove of treasures, including the lunar landing module, which is used for one
of those fight scenes where the hero dangles by one hand.” The movie’s director,
Perry Andelin Blake, has been a production designer on 14 movies, including
most of Adam Sandler’s, and, to be sure, “The Master of Disguise” has an
excellent production design. It is less successful at disguising itself as a
comedy.
I remember seeing commercials of this movie when it
was being released. Then, I saw it was available to watch for free when searching
On Demand when I was about 13 or 14, and I ended up watching it…twice. I don’t
know what I was thinking, but I didn’t sit through the credits, thankfully. I
remember finding this funny, but looking back now, this is one of the worst
mistakes for a comedy ever. Nothing about it is funny. Especially with the
ethnicities it offends, unapologetically. The impersonations were good for like
a minute, but it just kept going. I like fart jokes, maybe because I have that
kind of immaturity, but this film killed the fart joke. Never make the mistake
of seeing this comedy garbage because it will make you feel like your IQ is
dropping fast. You will regret you decided to watch this atrocious film. If you want any more proof, this film holds a 1% of Rotten Tomatoes. That should be enough for you to know never to watch this film.
What a relief. Now that we have gotten that horrendous
comedy out of the way, stay tuned next week for the next review in “Happy
Madison Month.”
