The Master of Disguise (2002)

Watching The Master of Disguise, an awful, stillborn comedy assembled out of rusty spare parts from secret agent movies and run-of-the-mill ''Saturday Night Live'' skits (where jokes often labor on well past their expiration dates), children who never knew Dana Carvey in his glory years on ''SNL'' will be nonplussed by the overwound, elfin doofus trying so hard to entertain.

Adults, meanwhile, who remember George Bush Sr. -- and Carvey's keen satiric evisceration thereof -- will just be damn depressed: How could the once biting comic retreat to such toothlessness and pass it off as ''family-friendly''? Families are likely to fracture as parents trample their kids while fleeing Carvey's Pistachio Disguisey, the bumbling, annoying scion of a family of annoying men with fake Italian accents, who masters the art of mimicry and thwarts a farting villain (Brent Spiner from ''Star Trek: The Next Generation''). Yes, farting. It's the last refuge of the desperate studio executive, and the only potential laugh-getter in this undisguisable stinker.

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