Review: Bowfinger

Super low-budget filmmaker Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin, with a clip-on ponytail!) is about to lose his small but ever-faithful filmmaking troupe, when he comes across the script he hopes will make him famous. Written by his accountant (Adam Alexi-Malle), the script is called ‘Chubby Rain’ and involves aliens that come to Earth inside raindrops. High-brow stuff. In order to get a big studio exec (like the one played by Robert Downey Jr.) backing the project, though, he needs a star, and he decides upon top action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy). And when Ramsey turns Bowfinger down, what does he do? He makes the movie around him, filming him without his knowledge, and just having the actors walk up and say their lines to him. His role is mostly just a lot of running around anyway, Bowfinger reasons. Unfortunately, Ramsey is one seriously messed-up individual, who likes to flash LA Lakers cheerleaders and is involved with a cult-like quasi-religious organisation named Mind Head (headed by Terence Stamp), as a kind of therapy. So when all of these strange people start approaching him and babbling about things he doesn’t understand, Ramsey flips. With his main star MIA, Bowfinger has to resort to getting a lookalike to finish the film. He happens upon nerdy, super-shy and hopelessly naive Jiff (also Murphy, squinting and with braces) who more than fits the bill. Heather Graham plays a seemingly naive small-town girl venturing to Hollywood for her big break. The shamelessly manipulative Bowfinger is more than happy to use her, but she quickly proves to be a lot less naive than she first appears. Jamie Kennedy plays the loyal cameraman who has to ‘borrow’ all of the equipment from a big studio.

Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin aren’t the same consistently hilarious stars they were in the 80s and early 90s, but this 1999 comedy from Frank Oz (the hilarious “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”, and uneven “Little Shop of Horrors”, both featuring Martin) is still the funniest either man has been since about 1991. Hell, the last time Eddie Murphy made me laugh before this film was 1988’s underrated “Coming to America”. Originality isn’t the film’s strongest suit, I’ll admit that. In fact, the main character is clearly very Ed Woodian, and there’s even a movie premiere scene that is a blatant steal from Tim Burton’s film. However, funny is funny, and clever is clever, and this film scores on both counts, especially the latter. There’s lots of sharp lines, rather savage digs at persons and entities unnamed (Allegedly including Anne Heche, possibly Victoria Tennant too, and almost certainly Tom Cruise and Scientology). I also loved the scenes of the film being made without Murphy’s awareness of it, though not even a filmmaker as inept as the one Steve Martin plays, would be dumb enough not to know that you need a star’s permission to use them or their likeness.

Best of all are the performances, including dual roles for Murphy which prove to be his best work in years. In particular the character of Jiff is an absolute standout, and a laugh riot. What I love is that he’s not just a joke, he’s a real character, and a very sweet, completely oblivious one, on top of being seriously funny. It might be one of his three funniest ever movie characters behind Axel Foley and the Randy Watson (‘Sexual Chocolate!’) character from “Coming to America”. I’ve read on IMDb that the dual parts were written for Keanu Reeves, which just seems insane to me, so I’m glad Murphy ended up with the gig. As the paranoid movie star Kit, he also has a great bit where he sees a white supremacist conspiracy contained in a movie script due to the abundance of K’s in it. The versatile Martin is ideally cast in a role, that as the film’s screenwriter, he probably tailored to himself. As the manipulative yet somehow likeable director, Martin balances the two sides as delicately and effectively as he did playing a low-rent con artist in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”. Heather Graham is surprisingly funny, and although I think Christine Baranski is an absolutely awful actress with only one note in her arsenal...somehow that makes her perfect here as a has-been actress who probably never was. Great cameos by Terence Stamp and an hilariously double-taking Robert Downey Jr., too (Now that time has passed, it’s easier to take Downey in this, as he was in trouble with the law back when this film was first released). The illegal alien crew members who are old film buffs was a nice touch, too, for attentive viewers.

This isn’t anything great, but for anyone who remembers when Martin and Murphy were funny, and laments that they haven’t been in a long time, this one’s a bit of a return to form. Sure, they didn’t follow it up terribly successfully (though Murphy did some good, semi-serious work in “Dreamgirls”), but it’s a fun film and one of the better comedies in a rather poor period in the genre.

Rating: B