The Master of Disguise (2002)

This could very well be the stupidest movie I have ever seen. Mostly known for being one of the worst movies made this side of Battlefield Earth, The Master of Disguise lives up to all the negative hype. No film has ever made 70 minutes feel like an eternity quite like this one.

Like watching a messy train wreck in slow motion, The Master of Disguise grabs a hold of you and refuses to let go. Sensible people will find the willpower to turn this movie off after about three minutes, but I sat through the whole thing so I could comment on it here. Taking one for the team never hurt so much.

I love Dana Carvey’s work on Saturday Night Live. He was always one of the best, so I was left scratching my head in bewilderment as to how this awful movie could have ever come into existence. Then I saw who produced it. Blame need go no further than Happy Madison productions, the production company of former SNL star Adam Sandler and the source for many insipid “comedies” over the last several years.

I can only imagine how Sandler talked Carvey into creating this pitiful, humorless comedy. Carvey is a natural at impersonating people and creating bizarre characters for comedic effect, so Sandler must have encouraged him to come up with as many impersonations as possible for the course of the film. While each character might have had a twinge of humor had they been given their fair share of screen time, the jam-packed nature of the film causes many otherwise fine impersonations to get lost in a sea of changing faces and voices.

But don’t be fooled- I make it sound as if there were a glimmer of hope with which to save this movie. In reality, there is not. The only way to “save” this movie would be to eliminate the plot and all the characters and just make it some kind of oddball instructional video by Dana Carvey on how to do impersonations, or even a behind-the-scenes guide showing us how he prepares to do these characters. In other words, the only way to improve The Master of Disguise is to eliminate it altogether.

Let’s start with the plot. It’s bad enough that the plot has been done plenty of times, but The Master of Disguise pretends to think that it can offer something new to the “my parents were kidnapped, so now I’m going to rescue them” genre. Enter Carvey’s character, ridiculously named Pistachio Disguisey. He is a bumbling nitwit who happens to come from a family rich in history with the almost supernatural ability to instantly take on any disguise in perfect detail.

Pistachio is so stereotypically Italian that it’s not funny. The overdone accent, the overblown mannerisms, it’s all borderline offensive. Even worse is that Dana Carvey looks to be about 0% Italian. So far so good, er, bad. What I wasn’t sure of was how old his character was supposed to be. Carvey was in his late 40s when making the film, but is made up to look like a 20 year old kid.

His parents are kidnapped, leaving him helpless. Helpless, that is, until his grandfather appears with a magic pop-up book that will unveil the secrets of the Disguisey way to young Pistachio. Appalled yet?

Now add in the obligatory gorgeous sidekick, played by Jennifer Esposito. She is more or less picked randomly and only takes the job because she needs money to raise her kid. She humors Pistachio for a while but in the end, his boyish charm wins her over. Ick. Together they try to track down who kidnapped Pistachio’s parents.

The kidnapper is Brent Spiner (Data from the Star Trek movies), a longtime enemy of the Disguiseys. He is a master thief but uses the elder Disguisey to steal valuable artifacts by impersonating celebrities and people of importance. He also passes gas every time he attempts to laugh like a stereotypical diabolical villain. This is meant to be a funny character trait.

In the end, there’s a big showdown and blah… blah… blah. The only thing that matters is that this is a horrible movie that was somehow overlooked by the Razzie Awards. No film marketed as a family adventure-comedy should EVER include the main character learning “the art of the bitch-slap.”

I rest my case. The Master of Disguise is a stain on the résumés of every single actor, writer, and studio hand involved in bringing this festering turd to life. It boasts atrocious writing, a barrage of tired clichés, pathetic visual effects and it makes no sense at all. Stay away from this movie at all costs!

If I find out that you have read this review and still watched The Master of Disguise anyway, chances are I will have to hurt you. And no, I won’t feel sorry about it at all.

RATING: 0.25 out of 5

The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)

One tagline for this film reads “An epic comedy of absurd proportions.” While the journey the film recounts may very well be epic, the comedy isn’t quite as absurd as advertised. Nevertheless, The Gods Must Be Crazy is an enjoyable and endearing film.

There’s three parts to the story: an African bushman named Xixo embarks on a quest to rid his village of a trinket believed to have been sent to them by the gods (in actuality a Coke bottle dropped out of an airplane). At the same time, a bumbling research scientist develops a crush on the local town’s new schoolteacher. Finally, a group of terrorist-led guerrillas are on the run after they botch a coup attempt.

All of these plot lines intersect in a variety of humorous ways. There is no vulgar comedy here. Instead, The Gods Must Be Crazy draws laughs from fish-out-of-water slapstick, awkward everyman bumbling, a few over the top sequences and some good old-fashioned dry, witty one-liners.

Most notable about this film is the portrayal of the lead character Xixo. The part is played by a real bushman who had virtually no exposure to the “civilized white world” before working on the film. The director found him in the bush and liked his expressions and genuine curiosity with all the trivialities that “civilized” people get hung up on. This genuineness shows right through on film and the character grows on you quite a bit.

His curiosity and lack of knowledge of “civilized” ways leads to much of the humor and also serves as an amusing poke at what we call society. Xixo doesn’t understand much about white people and their peculiar ways and thinks much of what goes on is unnecessary and silly. It sort of hearkens back to a simpler time and does a fantastic job of showing viewers just how absurd we really are sometimes.

A number of people believe this film to be racist because of its depiction of bushmen as uncultured savages, as well as the fact that it was made and funded by a South African film company (at the time, South Africa was still ruled by the racist and segregationist apartheid system of government). Granted, the click language used by the bushmen is dubbed over by a much more simplified series of clicking noises, but I rather enjoyed the culture clash and portrayal of “white society” as being filled with things that, while designed to ease our lives, only serve to complicate things. I would say this film is mostly harmless in terms of its racial implications.

There are parts that drag on a tad too long, but the overall story is too unique to pass up. I guarantee that you will never find another film that evokes comedy and culture quite in the same way as The Gods Must Be Crazy.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

What a silly, silly movie. Disaster flicks are notorious for being over the top and unbelievable, but The Day After Tomorrow aims for new lows (on a global scale no less!).

Take the absolute worst (and I mean apocalyptic) possible outcome to unchecked global warming, a process that would take a couple thousand years to play out, make it all happen in a matter of days, and you have The Day After Tomorrow.

Panned and criticized by nearly all respectable scientists and climatologists, the film oversteps its bounds and gets an overwhelming majority of its science wrong in the pursuit of flashy, computer generated destruction. As heavy-laden as this film is with CGI, you’d almost have to watch it on the big screen for it to look good. There’s something about CGI that doesn’t translate well over a normal TV screen.

I will admit that some of the destruction sequences are kind of cool looking, though watching it on a TV made the effects look a tad hokey. The problem is that The Day After Tomorrow doesn’t do enough to grab you and make you believe what you’re seeing could be real. This stems from the fact that the film wants you to believe that global warming can and will ultimately do this to our world. It is far too easy to stop yourself and say “that can’t possibly happen that way.”

Given all that we know about the natural sciences and weather phenomena, having the disaster sequences look cool isn’t enough. Gone are the days of sensational destruction via Mother Earth in films. Far too much of the general population has a good idea of how weather realistically behaves, even in the most extreme conditions. To try and pass off the overblown nature of these cataclysms under the guise of scientific plausibility is futile. Unless you check your brain at the door- a typical requirement of much of the fodder that passes for summer cinema- you’ll find yourself being pulled right out of the movie by the sheer absurdity of what you are being subjected to.

For example: Massive tornadoes ravage downtown Los Angeles. It’s a neat thought, but when was the last time you heard of a twister in LA? The atmospheric conditions are all wrong (but they explain it away by saying global warming totally altered atmospheric conditions everywhere). Furthermore, these massive twisters converge to create a single, gargantuan twister, in effect doubling its size, speed and destructive force. Cool notion, but it’s all wrong. Finally, this mega-twister completely guts a skyscraper, leaving just the concrete and steel skeleton. Cool visual, but it just wouldn’t happen.

Another example is the huge wave of water that bears down on the New York Public Library in tidal wave fashion. Yes, the New York Public Library faces a street (East 41st) that goes straight out to a water source, but this water source is minimal. Unless the surging water were high enough to completely plow through Long Island with very little resistance, the scene is impossible.

Aside from the environmental concerns, The Day After Tomorrow dishes out a few political jabs. The head-in-the-sand Vice President of the USA in the film looks very much like the actual Vice President at the time the film was released, Dick Cheney. The film also touches on the immigration debate. Virtually everything north of Texas is turned into a barren, frozen wilderness that is unsuitable for any living being. Thus, much of the American population ends up fleeing into Mexico, where the new temperate climate exists. It turns the tables on America by making them immigrants in a foreign land.

A similar impact is made on the rest of the world. The last shot in the film shows the whole earth where much of North America and nearly all of Europe has been frozen and rendered uninhabitable. This would force all the survivors to move into developing third-world countries. Now the citizens of many powerful states find themselves being taken in by those nations they were once reluctant to give much help to outside of food drops.

This can’t be a subliminal message, because it’s spelled out so clearly. The makers of this film are trying to send a message to all the wealthy powerful nations of the world, saying that our reluctance to stop global warming will be the end of our supremacy. The first shall be last and the last shall be first.

Aside from the overall message, the plot is pretty decent for a disaster flick. A climatologist warns everyone about the dangers of global warming but is brushed off. Suddenly his theory of world-wide devastation comes true but at an alarmingly expedient rate. His son gets caught in the brunt of the catastrophe and dad goes after him, risking his life. It leads to a predictable ending, but at least he’s a devoted father. That’s more than a lot of dads out there can say.

The strong family ties and commitment to survival is good and always ends up inspiring the viewer to some extent. I certainly wouldn’t want to face such conditions, but I’d like to think I could find a way to survive.

There is a secondary plot line involving romance between characters played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Emmy Rossum. They are longtime friends and he really likes her but she seems oblivious to his swooning. Before the super storm strikes, Gyllenhaal picks up some competition for the lovely Rossum’s affection at an academic Olympiad type competition. However, once the other guy sees how much Gyllenhaal cares for the girl, he tells him to go after her. How sappy and unrealistic is that?

My closing beef with this film is that, while it shows brief clips of destruction in other parts of the world, The Day After Tomorrow never follows up with the conditions the rest of the world. To me, this seems one-sided, as if America is the only country to blame, and that strikes me as lazy work. Yes, the main characters are Americans, so it’s important to show how America turned out, but there’s over 200 countries also being affected by this crazy weather and very little of it is addressed.

The disruption of climate patterns in one part of the world will set off a chain reaction of events across the globe, but The Day After Tomorrow doesn’t acknowledge this, it does not address this, and it does not portray this. This film has a target in mind and it hits it full force.

Had it not been so heavy-handed and preachy at times, The Day After Tomorrow could have been a smash hit 35 years ago. The only problems are that the computer effects didn’t exist back then and, at that time, everyone was worried about Global Cooling and the dawn of a new ice age.

RATING: 1.5 out of 5