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

Crash** (2004)

I don’t have much to say about this film, besides that I think it’s one that everyone should see. I certainly do not think that if everybody sees this that we will gain any ground on race relations in this country, but it will definitely give a lot of people a wake-up call.

Crash is an ensemble drama (like Magnolia), so there isn’t a central character. Instead, we follow the trials and tribulations of several residents of Los Angeles over the course of 36 hours. Ensemble dramas can be difficult for the typical movie-goer, but I think Crash is a film that everyone can be impacted by.

Yes, the racist trends and beliefs existing in our culture as a whole are oversimplified to an extent and there is some convenience in having all the characters connect to each other (although they don’t realize it), but life can be funny like that sometimes. Convenience can be excusable.

If Crash were trying to be an accurate depiction of reality, I would declare the film to be only so-so (the racist blacks are just as ignorant as the racist whites, etc). But, it plays up all the bad stuff in life for a specific set of interconnected individuals for the sole purpose of tugging at our minds and heartstrings. Crash is very good at doing this.

The characters aren’t completely fleshed out, but that makes it more realistic (we rarely know anything too deep about the people we pass by on the street). At the end of the film, you don’t know where our characters will be going next, but that’s the point. It’s a cross-section of racism in many forms today and an excellent thriller. I think it was worthy of Best Picture for it’s brutal portrayal of what life can be like.

RATING: 4 out of 5