Critic's Grade: D+

When are the studios going to learn that Saturday Night Live skits have no place on the big screen? Did we not have to endure enough in sitting through the obnoxiously stupid "A Night at the Roxbury," or the ever-enduring idiocy of last year's "Corky Romano?" Any conscious moviegoer could watch any one of these films and realize in two shakes of a ghetto booty that five minutes worth of laughs stretched out to feature length is still just five minutes worth of laughs, only few and far between.

"The Master of Disguise" falls into this category, a juvenile, redundant attempt to choke the laughs out of its audience, not so much with stupidity as its predecessors, but more out of a lack of ideas or inventive imagination. We get the normal bodily function gags and a main character whose view on reality is so distorted it makes Barney the Dinosaur look like a Nobel Prize-winning college professor. And while the movie does try, oh, does it ever try, it only manages to be funny in the slightest instances.

SNL veteran Dana Carvey returns to the big screen as Pistachio Disguisey, a dorky Italian waiter with a heart of gold and a brain of granite, the type of character the movies use in early scenes as a way of seeing laughter in their calamities (a scene involving restaurant patrons being drenched in spaghetti and meatballs is painfully unfunny). After his parents are kidnapped by a greedy thief named Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner), Pistachio is payed a visit by his grandfather (Harold Gould), who reveals his hidden family history of being masters of the art of disguise, which they used to stop crime and help others.

Now, it's up to Pistachio to find the whereabouts of his parents and Bowman. His grandfather teaches him the art of disguise, gives him a suitcase filled with everything he needs to evade his enemies, and wishes him well. Pistachio also picks up an assistant, Jennifer (Esposito, that is), who is at first put off by his eccentricity, but later warms to him because the script has to supply a love interest for the hero, right?

Predictability is not the only problem the film runs into. The first twenty minutes or so of the film is too busy setting up the ensuing second and third acts that it forgets to instill any humor into the introduction. In doing so, the filmmakers have taken a large risk in losing a hefty proportion of the audience who flee for the doors when no laughs are in sight.

Not that their flight would be without good reason. Sure, the film has its moments, and I was laughing to the point of tears in seeing Carvey don the turtle costume and go completely berserk in the film's sole humorous sequence. This scene gives one the notion that better things are in store, but my laughter soon turned to tossing and turning uncomfortably in my seat, waiting for the next moment of unrequitted, gut-bursting humor to make its way to the screen; it never happened, of course. The rest of the film is more miss than hit, dotted with a few chuckle-worthy moments here and there, but lacking the continuity needed to keep one's interest, or at least draw one's attention away from things like the sloppy plot and dopey production values.

I have to give Carvey credit for at least putting forth his best efforts here. His rambunctious tactics and enthusiasm are prevalent throughout the material, but his own collaboration in writing the script is a setback to his acting ability, and the overall effect of the film is one of realization that precious time and money has been wasted on about five minutes worth of comedy. Were this film a late night show skit, it would work wonders, but ironed out to its 80-minute running time, it's just a skit in an unconvincing disguise.

Copyright @ Hauntnut.com

All Reviews by David Litton [Home page]
If you are the author of this review, you may edit it by signing in.