Review: The Master of Disguise (2002)

You might well wonder why I'd even bother to see The Master of Disguise. It hit theaters a year ago. It left theaters about five minutes later. It's aimed at children. And its stars--Dana Carvey, Brent Spiner, Jennifer Esposito, James Brolin--all found their best successes on TV, not at the multiplex. (Yeah, I know, Carvey had the Wayne's World movies, and Spiner was in the later Star Trek flicks--both of which originated on TV. So stop giving me shit and keep reading, would you?)

So why did I see The Master of Disguise, you ask? Because the price was right.

For the past couple years, the Chicago Park District has sponsored a program called "Movies in the Parks." It's a smaller scale version of the city's "Outdoor Film Festival," which shows classic films--It Happened One Night, Rear Window, A Night at the Opera on a portable movie screen in Grant Park to an increasingly large (approximately 25,000 per film) and cranky crowd. "Movies in the Parks" play to smaller neighborhood crowds and include a mix of classics like The Wizard of Oz (which I saw in my local park last year) and more recent family fare like Spy Kids and Chicken Run. And, yes, The Master of Disguise.

So, on a Friday night with no prospects beyond parking on a couch in La Casa del Terror and watching one of our faltering baseball teams disintegrate a little more, I left La Casa right around dusk and took the short walk to Horner Park.

Horner Park--named for former Illinois givernor Henry Horner--is a fairly large rectangle of green on the western bank of the north branch of the Chicago River between Montrose Avenue and Irving Park Road. The park has the usual amenities, like baseball fields and tennis courts and winding paths for joggers or bicyclists or patrol cars to cruise. It also has, on its northern end, a sizable hill used for sledding in winter, jogging up and over in summer, and wishing upon stars all year round.

This night, the hill was being used as a temporary movie theater. A portable screen was on the south end of the crest, while viewers were scattered before it. Mostly, they were families with several small children, all in various stages of antsiness; the three brothers in front of me took turns pummelling on another, when the youngest one wasn't pretending that his dad was Mount Everest. There were also couples holding hands, an old man bearing a disturbing resemblance to the first zombie to appear onscreen in the original Night of the Living Dead, and a sleeping bag that occasionally moved with a suspiciously familiar up-and-down motion. And, of course, a tall, lanky man in glasses propped against the trunk of a maple tree.

Oh. Right. The movie.

Fabbrizio Disguisey (Brolin) decides to retire from the family business of being a "Master of Disguise"--a defender of the innocent and righter of wrongs (except for the making of this movie, which was very, very wrong) with the ability to disguise himself as anyone else. His last job involved dressing up like Bo Derek (the hell?) and busting rich, evil Devlin Bowman (Spiner). Fabbrizio then opens an Italian restaurant with his wife (Edie McClurg) and their son (Carvey), keeping his son in the dark about his legacy...his destiny...

Flash forward a few years. The son, Pistachio (unfunny "funny" name--always a bad sign), is now a clumsy waiter with an oddly thick Italian accent (given that he was raised in America) in the family restaurant, where he and his little dog, The Cuteness (even the dog has an unfunny "funny" name--yeesh), make friends with a little boy between bouts of uncontrollable customer mocking. When his parents get kidnapped, though, Pistachio learns of his legacy...his destiny...from Grandpa (veteran character actor Harold Gould), who shows up to teach his dim-witted grandson the ropes and help him hire an assistant (Espositio), who just happens to be the little boy's single mom, whose boyfriend is, of course, an abusive ass just waiting to be kicked.

And who has kidnapped Fabbrizio and his wife? Why, it's Devlin Bowman! Surprise! He forces Fabbrizio (Can I call you Fab? Really? Thanks!) to disguise himself as various lower-tier celebrities to steal "the treasures of the world" (which seem to all be American, like the Liberty Bell and the Declaration of Independence). Meanwhile, Pistachio (Can I call you Pist? Really? Thanks!) and assistant Jennifer search for Mama and Papa. Hilarity ensues. Or, in this case, not.

Carvey spends much of the movie hidden under elaborate disguises (an Indian fakir, a turtle, a Tony Montana-esque loudmouth and, most appropriately, a pile of shit) that make little in the way of sense and less in the way of funny. Spiner and Esposito are usually little more than bystanders for Carvey's schtick, but it's nice to see Harold Gould get a meaty supporting role. (Hell, it's nice to see that Harold Gould is still alive.) Gould at least gets to slap Carvey around. Too bad paying customers didn't have that opportunity when the movie first came out--it might have turned a profit.

I can bitch as much as I want about The Master of Disguise, but you know what? It wasn't made for me. It was made for a much younger audience. And a lot of the kids on the hill in Horner Park on a fine July evening giggled at the disguises and silly names and fart jokes. I wouldn't say they were rolling in the grass with laughter, but they seemed pretty entertained. And the movie is amazingly short--just over an hour, not including the lengthy closing credits--so their attention was held well enough.

No, I didn't like The Master of Disguise. (Gee, could you tell?) But I got to spend an evening relaxing in the park, and the movie cost me nothing but time, of which I had plenty anyway. So I really have little to complain about, do I?