The Master of Disguise: Movie & DVD Review (2002)

(Originally published 2002)

Here’s the good news: When it came to unseating "Battlefield Earth" as the worst movie in recent memory, it took Hollywood three years and hundreds of films to do so. The bad news? When they did it, they did it in a big way.

The new king of crap is Perry Andelin Blake's "The Master of Disguise," a comedy whose big set piece involves its star, Dana Carvey, donning a disguise that turns him into a gigantic walking cow pie and whose biggest recurring joke features a villain named Bowman (Brent Spiner) who giggles himself into fits of uncontrollable flatulence.

It’s enough to make the Church Lady lose her religion.

In the film, Carvey is Pistachio Disguisey, a dim-witted waiter at his father's Italian restaurant who "ah speeka like dees" and who "ah-lika the ladies with ah big-ah bum." That he’s a moron is a given, but that doesn’t prevent Pistachio from discovering a talent for mimicry, which comes in handy when he must imitate everything from a turtle to a snake-charming swami in an effort to save his father (James Brolin) and mother (Edie McClurg) from certain doom.

Too bad he couldn't do the same for the movie.

The film, which Carvey co-wrote with Harris Goldberg, is sad, incomprehensible dreck, a muddled, unfunny bore that’s stunning in its ineptness and its utter waste of talent. At my screening, people were either disguising their laughter as silence or they were lulled into a coma. Either way, it was clear that when it comes to having a good time, "The Master of Disguise" is right up there with vacationing on the Gaza Strip.

Grade: F