Susan Granger’s review of “The Master of Disguise” (Columbia Pictures)
Hot on the heels of Mike Myers’s tour-de-force in “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” his “Wayne’s World” sidekick, Dana Carvey, also attempts to play multiple characters. In this wretchedly unfunny comedy, Carvey plays a dork named Pistachio Disguisey, the descendant of a long line of disguise artists. His father, Fabbrizio (James Brolin), runs an Italian restaurant where Pistachio works as a waiter. But then Pistachio’s parents are kidnapped by Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner – a.k.a. Data from “Star Trek”), an evil art collector who suffers from acute flatulence. Bowman’s Black Market E-Bay website offers items like the Liberty Bell, the original American Constitution, the Apollo 11 moon module and Bruce Willis’ hairpiece from “Die Hard 2.” Pistachio is helpless until his grandfather (Harold Gould) teaches him the family tradition of visual deception, a device he can use to rescue them, and hires him a lovely assistant (Jennifer Esposito). In one scene, Carvey goes into the all-male Turtle Club dressed as Turtle Guy, coming out of his shell to repeat: “Turtle, turtle…”; in another, he crashes a party impersonating Al Pacino in “Scarface” with a bright red shirt and heavy Cuban accent; then he’s an Indian fakir. Carvey wrote the shoddy, senseless screenplay with Harris Goldberg (“Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo”) and the whole superfluous, sketchy mess is directed with vulgarity by first-timer Perry Andelin Blake. “It’s so crazy it might work” is Carvey’s oft-repeated phrase – but, no, unfortunately, it won’t – even with contrived cameos by Gov. Jesse Ventura, Bo Derek, Jessica Simpson and Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson. It’s a chaotic embarrassment. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Master of Disguise” is an inane, awful 1. No doubt, it’s the worst movie I’ve seen this summer.
