Dana Carvey seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth for a couple of years. The Master of Disguise is not a movie he should return to the public eye with. Carvey (Little Nicky, The Shot) is a talented impressionist and comedian, and The Master of Disguise makes ample use of the former. However, it completely lacks the comedy element, and serves only as a showcase for Carvey to present impression after impression of people and things that are not amusing. The near-total lack of anything funny just pushes the thin impressions even further into the minds of the viewer. HARO Online really hates this recent trend of movies that are really short and really bad. If somebody wants to make a movie, at least they should make a complete one. And even though The Master of Disguise is not the full length of a movie, it still feels painfully long.
Carvey plays Pistachio Disguisey, the latest in a line of Master of Disguises. However, his father Fabbrizio (James Brolin, Traffic, Haunted Sea) hid this fact from Pistachio, who has a talent for imitating the people around him. Devlin Bowman (Brent Spiner, I Am Sam, Dude, Where's My Car?), an old enemy of Fabbrizio, kidnaps Fabbrizio and begins forcing him to impersonate all sorts of people to steal valuable artifacts. Pistachio, with the help of his grandfather (Harold Gould, Stuart Little, Patch Adams) has to quickly learn how to be a real Master of Disguise and find his father.As written, Pistachio is an incompetent idiot. The only reason he is able to have any success is because of his beautiful assistant Jennifer (Jennifer Esposito, Don't Say A Word, Made), whom he hired despite her small butt. She is the only person in The Master of Disguise with any hint of a brain, which fails her once she inevitably falls for Pistachio.
The Pistachio character quickly becomes annoying, along with most everything else in The Master of Disguise. Take away the endless parade of disguises and a shell of a story remains, that could probably complete itself in half an hour. As written by Carvey and Harris Goldberg (Les Boys, Deuce Bigalow), this movie probably skews towards young kids. The fart jokes, short length, and general buffoonishness of the characters point to this. However, parodies of movies like Jaws and The Exorcist, as well as B-tier celebrity cameos (all of whom are identified by name) including Bo Derek say otherwise. How are kids supposed to get these jokes? How are adults supposed to be able to sit through everything aside from these jokes? What was director Perry Andelin Blake thinking? The Master of Disguise is the latest film from Happy Madison, Adam Sandler's production company. Sandler seems to be single-handedly shepherding the careers for ex-Saturday Night Live cast members in a series of mediocre to bad films. This is the first PG rated one, and hopefully the last.