Brent Spiner is best known and loved by sci-fi fans as Android Data, who always tried to become as human as possible in Star Trek: The Next Century and Beyond. But even during his less successful attempts, his synthetic series character didn’t seem as fake and fake as the characters on one absolute disaster comedyfor which Spiner became a constantly farting villain.
Is this completely subjective? Does that belong in the category? So bad it’s good? The actor has his own perspective on this.
Star Trek star Brent Spiner was in one of the worst movies of all time… and has no problem with it at all
We’re talking about Masters of Metamorphosis – a comedy film that was supposed to be a big comeback for Wayne’s World star Dana Carvey in 2002. He plays with a terrible Italo accent that wouldn’t even be acceptable for village sketch theater (brace yourself) Pistachio Disguisey, a bumbling waiter from a family of Italian disguise artists. When his parents are kidnapped by crook Devlin Bowman (Spiner with even more fake hair color and contact lenses than Data), Pistachio must learn the ancient techniques of his ancestors to save them.
Columbia TriStar
Scene from Master of Transfiguration
In the podcast Inside of You in 2023, Spiner spoke about the legacy of the film, which is horny and sentimental at the same time, over-the-top like Austin Powers, but not nearly as funny, unfortunately also contains unpleasant brownface and Moviepilot rated with only 3 points is. And why he’s not ashamed of it at all: “It’s not like I haven’t done bad things before. God knows I have. They’re almost classics.” He goes on to tell us more from the inside:
I love Transfiguration in its awfulness and it was so much fun. […] Dana wrote it, Adam Sandler produced it and has this crew that he works with all the time. He asked around: Who wants to direct? And no one answered. He asked the cameraman, but he was like: Nope. Finally the art director said ‘I’ll do it’, so he was like ‘Okay, you do it’ and that’s what he did.
By the way, the debut director in question was Perry Andelin Blake, who then only shot one TV episode and as a second unit director. However, he is still active as a production designer today.
Where can you see Masters of Transfiguration?
If you really want to see the horror of the film for yourself, you can find it available to rent or purchase on Amazon and Apple TV. You have been warned.