YMMV / The Master of Disguise

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Pistachio, as Turtle Guy, biting a guy's nose off cartoon-style then spitting it back onto the guy's face. It's bizarre and is never brought up again.
• Bile Fascination: The real reason why people are interested in seeing this is to see exactly how bad it is. The fact that it's considered one of the worst films ever made certainly helps.
• Common Knowledge: It is often claimed that the Turtle Club scene was filmed on 9/11. It was actually filmed two weeks later, though the cast did observe a moment of silence for the victims on the day of shooting the scene and Carvey was indeed in turtle costume at the time.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Many people interpret Pistachio as autistic for multiple reasons: he impersonates people who are right in front of him and doesn't seem capable of seeing how rude they find it, he has only one facial expression when he's not actively disguising himself, he has an atypical hobby of dressing up in weird costumes by using unusual things like shaving cream, he mutters incessantly to himself, he has poor posture, and he has an accent inconsistent with both where the film is set and where he grew up (America).
• Ending Fatigue: The film makes up for its scant 64-minute run-time by having nonstop outtakes, deleted scenes and other such Padding both during and after the credits.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Among the various personas adopted by Pistachio, his version of George W. Bush was about the only one that everyone agreed was perfectly on-target. Terry Suave was also regarded as, if nothing else, less annoying than most of the other characters, due to Carvey giving a more restrained performance instead of the broad comedy he went for elsewhere, as well as Suave delivering one of the film's few genuinely funny gags with the "This is what you're doing, this is what I want you to do" line.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: On its initial release, many critics lambasted the end credits being stretched out to roughly ten minutes long by incorporating deleted scenes and two post-credits scenes. Nowadays it's quite common, especially in major franchise films, to have end credit sequences that are 10+ minutes long^note Though that also has as much to do with the fact that the overwhelming majority of films released nowadays don't carry any opening credits and feature mid-credits and post-credits sequences — albeit usually things designed to set up future franchise entries and/or expound on plot points, rather than the largely irrelevant filler featured in this film.
• Padding: To quote Roger Ebert, "This movie, it never ended and it was only eighty minutes long".
• Presumed Flop: This was meant to be a comeback vehicle for Dana Carvey after a hiatus and be a showcase for his impressionist abilities, but ended up being regarded as one of the worst comedies ever made and derailing his career. However, it made $43.4M on a $16M budget.
• Questionable Casting: James Brolin and Edie McClurg are 15 and 10 years older than Dana Carvey and play his parents.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Dylan Sprouse and Cole Sprouse as a young Pistachio.
  • The late Naya Rivera as one of the kids in the alternate ending where Pistachio takes down Bowman while disguised as Captain America.
• Rooting for the Empire: Not that Devlin Bowman was widely regarded as an especially memorable villain — though being played by Brent Spiner certainly didn't hurt — but he's still way funnier than Pistachio and is one of the very few people in the film to actually not be annoying.
• Signature Scene: The Turtle Club is well known (and well mocked). The Trailer Joke Decay didn't help.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Jennifer Esposito somehow managed to do well with the material, and the fact that for a large part of the film she's the only person actually managing to get anything accomplished.
• Trailer Joke Decay: The Turtle Guy was the focus of all the marketing efforts.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The film not only has a soundtrack that's filled with early 2000s pop songs, but is stuffed with references to many things like Shrek, Malcolm in the Middle, the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson, the Olsen twins, and (in a Deleted Scene) All That.
  • Pistachio has a fetish for women that are stacked in the back. This being portrayed as humorous dates the film because pining for women with large bottoms is anything but unpopular these days.
• Values Dissonance: When Grandfather is teaching Pistachio how to be a Master of Disguise, one scene has Pistachio dressed like an Indian man, with his face being turned red and just before tapping into "Energico", he puts on a very stereotypical Indian accent. Upon assuming his new identity of "Prince Lali Jhamba from the Ringy Dingy Heights near Bombay, Caicutta and New Deihi, India", he charms a snake by playing "Songbird" by Kenny G. Obviously, such a scene wouldn't fly today, considering how racist and offensive the scene is, even if the scene in question was about a minute long.

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