What’s your favorite scene of one character pulling the wool over another character’s eyes in order to distract them so that he, she, or others can sneak past unnoticed?
I love Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog posing as “The Pizza Twins” in The Great Muppet Caper, taking an order so their pals can get through to the Mallory Gallery in their quest to foil the theft of the Baseball Diamond.
I’m fond of Indiana Jones’s posing as a Scottish lord in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, even if it is one of Indy’s least plausible moments.
There are some rather amusing disguises in the Danny Ocean series too.
What springs to mind?
One of my favorite scenes of this sort occurs in the Beatles movie “Help!” On the tarmac of Bahaman airport, a British Prime Minister type gentleman is being introduced to and inspecting a squad of soldiers. It appears that there are quite a few soldiers, but the camera pans back to show us that there are only 4 soldiers, and that after each is introduced, they duck behind the other three and get in line again.
It’s at the 5:31 mark of this:
By the way, “Help!” is full of great “before their time” scenes. Just back up to the 5:05 mark to see one such scene.
Another classic moment also come from Harrison Ford in Star Wars. Han and Luke donning stormtrooper gear and trying to pass off Chewbacca as their prisoner in order to gain access to the cell block to rescue Princess Leia. Just like the Indiana Jones moment, the dupe doesn’t go on very long before it falls apart, and the communicator conversation that follows the ensuing chaos is one of the funniest moments in the movie.
Also worth noting…Ulysses Everett McGill and his small band of chain gang escapees pull one over on a blind radio station operator to con him out of extra money after recording a song with just four men, instead of the six or seven that they told him about.
I love the Jeeves and Wooster episode where Bertie Wooster and Gussie Fink-Nottle have to pretend to be each other because one of them was late. Since Wooster is known for his musicianship, Gussie has to entertain the guests by playing the piano and singing, despite his speech impediment. Wooster, on the other hand, in order to be believed to be Gussie, has to talk openly about his fondness for newts.
In Throw Momma From the Train, when Owen (Danny DeVito) tells his Momma (Anne Ramsey) that his friend Larry (Billy Crystal) is “cousin Patty”. She bursts his bubble and says, “You don’t have a cousin Patty”, prompting him to improv to Larry, “You lied to me!” and hit him over the head with a frying pan. It remains one of the great comedic moments for me.
And for most of A Knight’s Tale, Paul Bettany in his outrageous movie-stealing role as Geoffrey Chaucer, creating a history and talking smack for his ragtag group of Heath Ledger fans.
This doesn’t fit the category exactly, but Peter Falk in Wings of Desire was a great “disguise” character. One of my favorite cameos ever, too.
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” (Parodied nicely in a recent Dilbert).
I love Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. Especially as the telephone company mechanic (“I hef fikzed ze fun from ze rinkink… Zer is no zjarzj”).
In the old classic I Love Lucy, when Lucy plays all the celebrities for their nearsighted friend.