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    The Master of Disguise

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

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    Pre-teens will probably have fun with "The Master of Disguise". For everyone else it's a near-unwatchable and embarrassing experience.

    After his parents are kidnapped, Pistachio Disguisey (Dana Carvey) learns that he comes from a long line of astounding disguise artists. Mastering his craft, he sets to rescue his parents and stop the villainous Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner) from getting away with a series of outlandish heists.

    This film is an agony to watch because of the humour. There are jokes that work (when you pelt the audience with as many as this film does, something is going to stick eventually) but you'll feel ashamed of yourself for giving even a second of laughter to this train wreck. It’s so juvenile and irritatingly so, like being buried up to your neck in sand while listening to a bunch of prepubescent boys as they smear dog poop on various objects. The name of our protagonist is "Pistachio Disguisey". Did that make you laugh? No? Then you’re in trouble because this film thinks it’s hilarious. His name is "Disguisey". As in a master of disguise, get it? Our hero, a creature so abominable tossing it into a sack and dashing it’s brains against a concrete wall would be medal-worthy, is defined by another series of jokes where we learn that he likes women with big butts. That way the film can dump joke after joke about big butts. There's nothing more to it than that. The fact that he likes big butts is the joke. He's also a bumbling idiot that's barely able to wait tables, speaks in broken English (although no one else in the family does) Loathsome? Yes. So, in an attempt to make you like this wretch, director Perry Andelin Blake includes several scenes showing that he's a nice guy. That way you can tell whom you’re supposed to like, and whom you’re supposed to fantasize about chopping up into pieces and shoving down a meat grinder. In theory anyway.

    From this irredeemably handicapping protagonist, we move onto the supporting cast, beginning with the “real” but dumb woman named Jennifer, played by Jennifer Esposito. She is in the movie for two reasons: first so we can have a love plot at the end of the film (a cherry on top of the sundae when our hero defeats the villain) and second so we can showcase how nice Pistachio is when he confronts her boyfriend, a guy that's such a transparent jerk the movie only pretends that he genuinely likes Jennifer for about 30 seconds before exposing him as a child-hating, lying and cheating bully. His character is taken straight out of a cartoon and is included because there is no way you would otherwise believe that the 29-year-old woman would fall in love with Dana Carvey, who was 47 when the movie was made. That's right, the man is nearly fifty but he is playing a naïve, bumbling waiter that is still living with his parents. Jennifer has a son too, introduced early in the film and gone without a trace until the very end and only included so Pistachio can befriend him in the hopes that our desire to spoon-feed him burning hot coals is alleviated. It comes off as creepy for the two to be friends considering the age difference. Our villainous mastermind is bent not on taking over the world, but on stealing every valuable artefact in existence. His character might have felt like a genuine threat if it wasn't for the fact that he has an embarrassing gas problem to make the kiddies laugh.

    So where do our abysmal characters land themselves? In a plot that is so thin it lasts 70 minutes. That's right, the 80-minute running time is padded out with 10 minutes of credits and out-takes at the end. There’s only the thinnest semblance of a story here, just an excuse for Dana Carvey to disguise himself in a series of outrageous characters including a horny old lady, Tony Montoya from "Scarface" (because children will delight in the pop culture reference? ), a British Nerd, a suave secret agent, a racist stereotype of an Indian snake-charmer, a patch of grass with cow dung for a face and a man covered in cherries (in a sequence that makes absolutely no sense.)

    The jokes that deserve to be highlighted here also include Pistachio commenting on the size of tiny appetizer wieners and nuts, outrageous dancing, references to “Jaws”, a training dummy with a mind of its own, a hologram that can interact with people and reacts to the "hilarious" events going on around it (despite the fact the movie explicitly explains to us that It's pre-recorded) The only thing that works in the movie is the technical aspect. The props, sets and costumes look good but everything else is total trash. Even then, the makeup is pretty convincing but the film makes the calamitous mistake of using real-life actors as some of Pistachio’s father’s disguises. It completely ruins one of the final jokes of the film: Dana Carvey disguised as President George W. Bush. Basically you’re left with nothing. Had “The Master of Disguise” been a play, I might have been able to recommend it, if only so someone would eventually have the courage to jump on stage and murder everyone involved. That, I’d pay to see. I can think of hundreds of things you’d rather do than watch "The Master of Disguise", like punch yourself in the face for instance. But if you are curious, there is a scene at the very end of the credits. (On Dvd, May 10, 2013)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  28.4.2016 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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