I would find it unwatchable now, especially after hearing about the behind the scenes drama. But I'm happy that Allison, Phelan, and Matt are all still such great friends.
As someone who's seen both To Boldly Flee and Master of Disguise, I would rather sit through the Turtle Club scene a thousand times before I'd ever watch TBF again
"This turtle club scene doesn't appear to have any actual jokes in it" "Don't worry I'll just keep saying the word turtle that's what comedic repetition is, right?"
Fun fact: The turtle 🐢 club scene was filmed right after 9/11 happened. The cast & crew felt uncomfortable on set, filming such a silly scene after such a tragedy befell the country. Heck, there was a moment of silence before they started filming & the director gave a heartfelt speech about it, all the while Dana Carvey was in the turtle 🐢 costume
Honestly, this feels like some Hollywood exec saw how huge Mike Myers was at the time with Austin Powers and Shrek, and said "Find the other Wayne's World guy and give him a blank check."
Or Dana Carvey was desperate in getting some kind of job he begged Adam Sandler for a movie because it’s Happy Madison. Sandler’s production company bad reputation speaks for itself, cheap crappy comedy movies made for his friends so they can have a job.
@@Cyber_kumo exactly! I’m so glad that I’m encountering someone who’s actually smart. Adam sandler is the biggest loser to ever make it in Hollywood and for some reason people can’t get enough of his shit movies. There’s no such thing as a good adam sandler movie… even his so called “dramatic movies” are terrible. Did you ever see Punch Drunk Love? That was one of the worst movies ever made
@nsasupporter7557 I actually like Hotel Transylvania. I thought the writing was good and it was actually pretty funny. So I'd make the case that there's at least one.
Ah! The only movie I've ever walked out of the theater on! I worked there, got in for free with friends. The movie was notoriously short, we had an hour to kill in-between movies we actually wanted to see...and we walked out after 25 minutes. Loitering in the lobby seemed like a better use of our time.
I've never walked out of a movie, but my legs tensed up to walk out of Battlefield Earth on their own accord. A friend walked out of Bad Boys. "I can't take this shit," got up, walked out.
I remember my mom taking me to the movies spontaneously one day. Master of Disguise and Austin Powers: Goldfinger were playing at the same time slot when we got there. Mom didn't like Austin Powers, so we saw MoD. When the credits started my mom went "...we should've gone to Austin Powers."
Saw this in a theater. As the end credits rolled a ten year old kid stood up and loudly proclaimed "That was stupid!" He got the biggest laugh of the night.
I remember in the Bushwacked vid with Matt, you said something along the lines of, "I think everyone has that movie from their childhood that they look back on like "Why..."." This was mine. This was my "Why..." movie. My mom loved Dana Carvey, my sisters and I were the prime age where "lol random" humor was Comedy Gold, and we must've rewatched this movie a thousand times before around the age of 13, I was like, "wow this is so unfunny, how did I ever find this funny?" and never watched it again.
@@mrskittles08 I don't think you have any idea what _"super fucking"_ high looks and sounds like. Because this isn't it. At all! How are they behaving any differently than in other videos they've done together anyway?
Roger Ebert said this movie was like a party guest who think's he's funny but really isn't. He also said the overlong end credits were like the guest refusing to leave.
Bro, that joke is brilliant! What do you not get? I mean think about the layers, he's dressed like a turtle, and he says turtle. Did you get that? He's dressed like a turtle AND HE SAYS......TURTLE!!!
My stepfather brought me to see this as a way to bond when I was 5 years old and we smuggled cosmic brownies and Gatorade into the movie theater. I remember cackling over the turtle, but it says a lot about the movie that I remember more about the snacks than I do the plot lmaooo
It’s probably more from a fault he saw in you. If not your poor taste in movies, it was most likely your baseless sense of self importance and superiority. You have no justification for it. I am sure he is more thankful for the brevity than you are.
I will never stop mentioning that Dana Carvey based Garth on his brother, Brad, who went on to program plugins for Photoshop and created the Video Toaster editing suite.
I was a kid watching a lot of Nickelodeon/Cartoon Network around this time and I remember the trailers for this movie were played CONSTANTLY. Like, you were guaranteed to see an ad for this film every single commercial break. That’s literally all I know about this film.
Yes - I have never seen the movie, but they played those ads so often, that over 20 years later the "am I not turtle-y enough for you?" line still pops into my head at random moments!
I imagine this to be like the remake of _The Wicker Man._ You watch clips on RU-vid, and it looks insane with Nic Cage in a bear costume punching women and the infamous bees scene, but then you watch the movie and it's a slog to get through.
@@johnsensebe3153 I never really thought of it that way, I guess because the weird culture explained why the villagers would just break into song like that.
This movie feels like a D&D game where the rogue has made a silly character and someone else in the party has to do all the leg work. But the DM loves the rogue, so everything revolves around that character.
As Master of Dungeons, I make a new Rule: If you make a Character based on Pistashio Disgusey, that character dies before you begin character creation.
This movie was kind of the precursor to all of those Scary Movie spinoffs like "Epic Movie" or "Meet the Spartans", where they'd just put a bunch of references to other films without rhyme or reason and that was the joke. "It's funny because I've heard of it!" It's no satire or commentary, it's just a reference, and not even told in a humorous way. It's a special kind of comedy film where all the scenes with fart jokes are genuinely the funniest part. And the whole "Stop trying to become another person!" thing baffled me. He suddenly starts screaming that in the middle of the chase scene, as if there was at some point some subplot about being unable to control his abilities, but such a thing is never established in the movie. There's the whole "dark side of Energico" at the end, but it's barely related and it's only then that he learns about why it might be a bad thing, so why would he protest earlier? I know there's a lot of nonsense in this movie, but that particular bit has stuck with me for years.
@@caucasoidape8838 the first 2 are actually funny and they did find a way to put multiple things into one and it make sense, the others however did not fare so well and kept getting worse
I kind of thought of those as the degenerate form of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker style of comedy ("Airplane!" and its successors). ZAZ made some really funny movies that way, parodies done with the philosophy that you just stick in as many jokes as possible and if someone didn't like the last one, there'll be another along in about five seconds. But in the hands of a hack, it's mind-numbing. It's no longer surprising that you dropped a reference out of the blue because that's the whole movie. And I think part of what makes "Airplane!" work is that, oddly, there are the bones of an actual story inside it (the old disaster move "Zero Hour!") That keeps you oriented and gives the constant jokes something to play off of.
This movie reminds me of when in 'Allo 'Allo, René says this about Monsieur LeClerc's terrible disguises - "The man of a thousand faces - all of them the same."
This is because in an inexplicable way they actually understood that the fart itself cannot be the joke. It's an odd perfect understanding of humor in an otherwise entirely incompetent use of it.
Let's remember this was released a little over a year after Spy Kids (2001) which has a nonsensical surrealist style to it, so I can kind of see why the producers thought The Master of Disguise would be a hit if they just included a secret plot involving a missing family member, substituted a family tradition of espionage for "the master thief of disguise" family tradition, and packed it full of absurdity. I think they were trying to capture what Spy Kids succeeded at, but ended up waaaaay off the mark.
Joins Dan Akyroyd's "Nothing But Trouble", Eddie Murphy's "Norbit" and Mike Myers' "The Love Guru" in a genre I'd like to call "Comedians Utterly Failing to make a vanity or comeback film while wearing ridiculous make-up." Bonus points for putting on a stupid voice.
You know a movie is a rough watch when you instinctually look up the poor up-in-comer in it (in this case, Jennifer Esposito) and hope to god this didn't tank their career.
for the longest time, my mom would quote "am i turtley enough for the turtle club?" and assumed it was some classic of comedy she was referencing. you would not believe when i found out that the origin was from what most people consider one of the worst films ever made
I haven't even started the video yet, and I can tell you exactly why it was made - it was a vanity project for Dana Carvey, who felt that Mike Myers had stolen all his characters and impressions, particularly in the Austin Powers films. I was a kid when this movie was released, and Dana appeared on every talk show on every network in the weeks leading up to the release to talk about this film being his magnum opus and really hype it up. The big networks, especially NBC, ran ads and featurettes for it constantly. It was being plugged as the greatest comedy going into the new century. I went to see it with my mom, and when the credits rolled we just looked at each other like "that was it?". I don't remember laughing once. In fact, I just felt embarrassed.
100%. There was baggage between them from the start. Carvey was initially the bigger star when they were both on SNL and when Myers wanted to put on the Wayne's World sketch, Lorne Michaels insisted that Carvey be a part of it which didn't sit well with Myers because he'd been doing the Wayne character for years before SNL and didn't think Wayne needed a sidekick. Even when it came to making the movie, he didn't think Garth should be a major character and initially Carvey wanted out of the movie because Myers kept undermining him. So once Austin Powers (and Shrek for that matter) put Myers on top of the world, Carvey tried to match him with this movie and it just failed spectacularly on every level.
Man, it's always a shame when you hear the behind the scenes stuff like this that reveals what you saw as an adventure with funny buddies had a whole heaping load of bitterness behind it. The art remains great, but the intentions feel soiled, somehow.
From the director's commentary, the reason for all the women in the film with massive butts was because Perry Andelin Blake wanted to push an "anti-anorexia" message (whatever that means.) Some kind of thing about "big women" being beautiful in the early 2000s but it kinda makes zero sense when you realize that every single woman in the film that Pistachio is attracted to is with a big butt prosthetic on a conventionally attractive actress (Sophia) or models (Bowman's henchwomen from the end credits) who are all also attempting to seduce Pistachio. And the movie also seems to write Jennifer as the woman he "settled" on. Kinda strange too how a movie that was semi-directed at kids featured a protagonist having a butt fetish and the main antagonist has a group of women attempt to corrupt him with his fetish (end credits scene.)
Phelous recently reviewed "Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night" in which the Stromboli-type character, Puppetino, calls Pinocchio "Pistachio." This movie has a character actually named Pistachio, who fights a villain played by Brent Spiner. Spiner played Stromboli in "Geppetto." And William Windom, who voiced Puppetino, also appeared in "Star Trek" as Commodore Decker. EVERYTHING. IS. CONNECTED.
What is astounding is that this film actually made 43$ million. It had a budget of 16 million. THIS FILM MADE MONEY. Dana's next appearance was in the Cinematic masterpiece "Jack and Jill."
Brent Spiner has an excellent sense of comedic timing. I'm not surprised his stuff actually worked. And Jennifer Esposito has been in a few things. She was in Dracula 2000 for instance. She's good, but I don't think she's had the best luck with roles.
She had a lot of good roles prior to this. She was great in Summer of Sam and Welcome to Colinwood. After this movie, I think her options were limited.
That whole Quint from Jaws thing was the only legitimate funny gag in the movie. And it was pretty damn funny. "29 kids go in the water. 22 kids come out of the water. Ice cream man, he gets the rest." Ice cream men are apex predators in their niche, sharks of the land if you will.
Dang Jay Johnston threw away a pretty prestigious career on Jan 6th. I looked him up on Wikipedia because he seemed so familiar. He was a writer and actor on Mr. Show. He wrote and directed episodes of Moral Orel. And he was an actor on The Sarah Silverman Show, and made guest appearances on Arrested Development, Bob's Burgers, Parks and Rec, Community, and every funny TV show you can think of. He had to know every writer and comedian in television. He turned himself into the FBI on June 7, 2023. It was alleged he used a stolen police shield in an attack in the tunnels against the Capitol Police.
Seeing all the turtle club stuff reminded me that there's an actual semi-secret fraternity called "The Ancient & Honorable Order of Turtles". It was started by US air pilots after WWII and is basically a drinking club.
This is what all fraternal organizations are, really, my dad is a Mason and all he seems to do is go to meetings, and restock the beer at the lodge thru his job at Anheuser-Busch. It’s been said that the KKK would never have formed if Birmingham had an Elks Lodge
For some reason this was my youngest sister's favorite movie so I've seen it literally like hundreds of times, and I couldn't tell you the plot to save my life. It's truly an astounding movie in it's own right, I have no idea how it got made or distributed but my sister is very grateful! She still loves it. Also Brent Spiner in this is just *chef kiss* muah so good.
I’ve been playing a Tortle in my current D&D game. “Turtle turtle” references have been made but I can’t wait to tell the table what happened in the movie other than that one second.
Dana Carvey is my favorite SNL performer and, I think, one of the most talented - but Master of Disguise is a powerful rebuttal to that. Clean Slate is a hell of a lot better though.
I have to admit, as a kid I did actually laugh at people doing weird accents for the sole reason of "funny sounding man I don't fully understand is so lol." I think I got over that around age 13, and by 14 any time I saw something like that I'd just shake my head like "why are you doing this". So if he literally was aiming to please SPECIFICALLY nine year olds, I think he could've done worse. If he wanted to actually make a movie with an actual story, not so much.
The Master Of Disguise would have worked SO much better as a Nicktoon. As a live action movie it was god awful, but imagine if it popped up on Nickelodeon in 2002 or 2003 as a vehicle for Dana Carvey's voiceover talents (in the same way The Mighty B was a vehicle for Amy Poehler a few years later). Feel like it would've had a chance at supplanting Fairly Oddparents as the #2 Nicktoon of that era behind Spongebob.
Back when this movie came out, I remember 12 year old me really wanted to see this movie because I thought it looked so funny. Nowadays, I look back and feel like I narrowly dodged a bullet by not seeing it.
This is the first time in forever that one of Allison's videos has been recommended. How did the algorithm know I was feeling nostalgiac for 2010s content creators?
The Brent Spiner farting scenes are comedy gold, he is supposed to be this serious villain yet every time he monologues, he farts... it is hilarious. Pity the rest of the movie is there though.
My cousin went crazy for this movie when she was 10 and the turtle scene was her favourite. I had to watch this movie multiple times when babysitting her. Agonizing but the movie clearly clicked with its target demo, I guess?
How Did This Get Made's hosts had the theory that Dana Carvey's character was supposed to be a smallish child, like maybe 10 years old, which would make the whole movie actually make sense.
Should've ended with Dana's kids telling him the story and him saying they should leave the comedy to him. Would've at least made it more about them and the nonsensical plot makes sense in a 9 yr old mindset
For years I wondered why Mike Meyers never threw a bone to his old friend Dana Carvey and offer him a spot in the Austin Powers movies...then I saw this movie.
I have a little theory that Mike Myers and Dana Carvey are both funnier when they have someone to play off of, or are part of an ensemble. My only frame of reference for Carvey is Wayne's World and this movie, so I can't say for sure. But Mike Myers had The Cat in the Hat and The Love Guru among his "solo" movies and those didn't fare well.
I don’t understand why this movie was hated so much… it isn’t any worse than any adam sandler movie. Adam sandler is a god to pretty much everybody and they love his shit movies, so why do they hate Master of Disguise
Despite being a generally sensitive kid who didn't like broad comedy, I was inexplicably OBSESSED with this movie when I was twelve. I watched it a double digit number of times and could recite large swaths of it. I still don't know why.
My brother and I, in our youth, would do all night bad movie marathons while downing bottles of Jolt. We called this "Night of Pain." This movie was featured one of those nights.😒
This is perhaps the best movie yet you guys have done together, Allison! Thanks for doing this! I love it so much, bro! BTW, you look pretty with your makeup and your pink shirt, too! What a great look!
I remember when this movie came out, I was still very little. I remember at one point my parents both just looked at each other in the theater, grabbed me and my brother, and just walked out. I want to say it was during the Turtle Club scene, but I can’t remember. 😅
The 'disguise' aspect is probably the most glaring problem for me, which is a shame because it's the central concept of the movie. Imagine if Dana Carvey was Max in a movie version of Get Smart. Essentially, this movie but he's being forced to play one character consistently in all scenes, so there's a much better sense of progression from scene to scene because they aren't having to accommodate whatever whacky disguise he's wearing this time. I'm not saying that would be *better*, it may still have stunk, but I don't know, I just feel like that's what the movie really needs. Something. Anything.
Jesus, you guys are such masochists. I don't know that I could put myself through The Master of Disguise for the sake of an audience. Thanks for the dedication!
oh man, if Dana got to make the movie HE wanted or a good version of the character, he could have crossed over with Austin Powers for a Mike & Dana reunion. And they have to go undercover as hosts of a public access tv show
I thought Church Lady was funny at first, but like any popular SNL sketch they quickly ran it into the ground. I think if you were around and actively watching SNL back in the late 80s when Carvey and that character was new you'd probably have liked it.
Fun fact: there was at least four theme songs for The Master of disguise in the movie that played. Can vividly remember all four of them because I remember watching this movie over and over again when it was on cable. I guess I was desperately trying to like the movie because I could relate to some of the things, but it really wasn't that good enough to rewatch. It's a shame really because Dana carvey is really talented with impressions. I did enjoy parts of the movie, though, primarily the impressions. Lastly, on the theme songs, it felt like they were trying to shoehorn in some sort of series of movies or some type of backdoor pilot with all those songs. Either that or they couldn't afford a better soundtrack of music.
Great work you guys, idk how you y’all can keep a straight face working with one another, you guys are just too damn funny, especially Phelous. Y’all look good & keep it up.
I lost a friend over this movie. Not over any argument, but he invited me over one day to chill, smoke a lil somethin' and watch a movie he rented. He said it was the funniest movie he's ever seen. Sounded good to me. We light up, he puts on this movie and just laughs at the dumbest things. I left that day and never went back. I felt like Dee in that one episode of Always Sunny, when she's watching Lil' Kev watch cartoons.
The turtle scene is pretty much seared into my brain because it was in EVERY TRAILER which a bunch of played constantly before the movie came out. Funnily enough iirc the trailers weren’t as common afterwards as if they realized they had a hunk of shit at hand and just stopped advertising it as much. Which honestly is why reviews are the only reason I know a single thing that happened in the movie. I just thought it looked shit and didn’t bother asking my late dad to take me to see it. Fuckin 10 year old me who thought movies like bio dome and dude where’s my car were comedy gold realized this was awful.
It should be noted I think both mentioned films are hot garbage now. I used to watch bio dome constantly with my brother. A few years ago we watched it again. Only got about halfway through before quitting. I tried dude where’s my car too and hated it.
I remember as a kid (about 6 or 7 at the time), I really wanted to see this movie, just for the Turtle Guy. In fact, I was unhappy that my Mom wouldn't take me to see it opening day. Ah, the simpler times of youth...When a single "joke" in the trailer could make me want to see a movie as soon as possible. I was such a dumb little kid.
Dana Carvey says "turtle, turtle" so many bloody times in this horrible film, I'm honestly surprised the Ninja Turtles didn't show up to tell Pistachio Disguisey to shut the fuck up.
In concept it was good. He was hugely popular and known for playing many characters, and having him play a master of disguise made sense. Of course we know the result. Wonder what we'd get if he instead played a spy or detective who has to pretend to be various celebrities and politicians, and it wasn't aimed it at kids.
Bringing up the Illuminati just had me remember Mike Meyers' film (series?) about his Pentaveret bit from "So I Married an Axe Murderer" and now I'm imagining how wild it'd have been to reference Pistachio in that (never saw it),
_So I Married an Axe Murderer_ is great. _The Pentaverate_ ...I never saw it but it has mixed reviews and about a 5/10 perfect-middle score. And it was a miniseries. Six episodes.
My then teenage-daughter chose this movie for us to see. I could not stop staring. We immediately went out and bought ticket for another movie before we left the theater.
I completely forgot about the "Misery 2" sketch 😂. Now that makes me wonder if "Massive Head Wound Harry" (1991) was inspired by the ghost makeup for Victor Pascow in Pet Sematary (1989).
Hey, with Matt editing this video, he's kind of sort of reclaimed what was taken from him when he wanted to review it, but a certain someone else was gonna do it, so he reviwed Jack & Jill instead.
So I worked as a caterer with my family in SOuth Pasadena for a decade and a half, and like in the basement of Castle Green they had a framed, signed poster for this movie in the laundry room for the tenants. It was behind arack full of decades of magazines and donated books, ahaha. I owned this on VHS and I loved it, and Signs. I don't know why I was given those at the same time, but I was happy for it. GOD THIS MOVIE RUINED ME. LIKE BETWEEN THIS AND STUFF LIKE ANGRY BEAVERS, I WAS DOOMED TO BE A GOOBER.
