I've always been a Dana Carvey fan. He was funny on Saturday Night Live, funny in Wayne's World, and funny everywhere else that he wasn't bearing the full weight of a movie with the strength of his comedic ability.<br /><br />His big test came in Master of Disguise, and with it he flunked out of film school.<br /><br />Don't believe that just because you're a "comedy fan" (as one reviewer put it) that you'll somehow be rolling in the aisles at this. You won't. If you were in the theater, you'd probably walk out. Since you'll probably watch this at home, expect to walk out of your house, because the whole thing will be poisoned.<br /><br />The first poorly acted scene with legendary starlet Bo Derek was just a harbinger of things to come. Flailing confusion followed for the next 75 minutes, which seemed a stretched out version of a 45 minute script.<br /><br />The acting never convinced you of anything but the effect of weak directing. It was as if director Perry Blake was too afraid to tell his actors what to do. Few of them turned in a scene that didn't seem like a first take. The cameras just kept rolling anyway, perhaps trying to save money on film by not re-shooting anything.<br /><br />The costume-based jokes all fall flat in seconds. When a character is more creepy and awkward than funny, there's a problem. On a scale of 1 to 10, one being amusing and ten being creepy, the "Turtle Guy" scene was the proverbial 11. Note to all involved: A guy saying "turtle" in a weird sheepish voice isn't funny, and it certainly isn't funny when you've had him repeat it 20 times within five minutes as the only attempted joke in the entire scene.<br /><br />If the only comic relief next to the performance of confused, awkward "straight man" Jennifer Esposito is a guy repeating the same line over and over again, you're scraping the wood off the bottom of the laugh barrel. There's just nothing there to find remotely amusing. All the audience feels is pity for everyone involved in the movie, including themselves.<br /><br />That type of unnerving awkwardness repeats over and over again throughout the movie, halted only briefly by comedic gems left completely unexplored like the "Classmates.com" profile in which the evil villain (played by Brent Spiner, who once again had nothing to work with) gives away his entire plan.<br /><br />What you get is an unfunny, unbearable view of Dana Carvey and many of his cast mates committing career suicide right in front of you. If you want to watch a movie that makes you feel joy, laughter, intrigue, and other positive feelings, watch something else. If you want to ride a roller-coaster of unrequited emotion as you hope over and over again that Dana Carvey is funny for his own sake, only to be let down over and over again until you push the stop button, this one's for you. It's not funny; it's sad.