Bowfinger
by Catherine Lee

"Wow! Great script! Great script!" are the first words of Bowfinger uttered by down and out producer/director Bobby Bowfinger as he turns the last page of the script sitting in his lap. These opening lines beckon like a fairy tale. Like "Once upon a timeä" they lull us into imagining a Hollywood highly unlike the real Hollywood, where movies are made because the scripts are great. Bowfinger would fit nicely in this fantasy world.

Bowfinger is a delightful movie about moviemaking, and a sharp satire of Hollywood. It's an hilarious screwball romp, with an outstanding opportunity for Eddie Murphy to dazzle as two characters. Even if you don't care at all how the world of Hollywood functions, Bowfinger will make you laugh.

Bowfinger is also warm and full of very human characters with faults and foibles, touches of doubt and desperation. The skewering of Hollywood is more Preston Sturges than Robert Altman, except for Scientology stand-in MindHead, which gets pretty much what it deserves, from my angle. (Terence Stamp gives one of many great supporting performances as the soothing guru in charge of MindHead. )

At center stage and also behind all of the fun is the dreamer in the chair, pouring over a screenplay and loving the idea of making Chubby Rain, a sci-fi thriller complete with aliens that sounds straight out of the Ed Wood catalog. Steve Martin is that dreamer, not just the star of the movie, but also the screenwriter of Bowfinger. He has written a film that lets him lavish equal doses of affection and ridicule on writers, directors, studio execs, actors and producers. Bowfinger is easily the best work of his movie career.

He has written for himself a role that seems very close to how I imagine he sees himself, a guy full of faith in the magic of the movies and plenty of blarney to navigate oceans of obstacles and problems. He's willing to lie, cheat, steal and put those who share his vision through hell. He commits his crimes in service of something he truly believes in, so he is easy to root for.

Scam artist extraordinaire that he is, Bowfinger greases his way to a table at The Palm next to a slippery studio suit (Robert Downey, Jr.) who, as a joke, says he will make Chubby Rain if Bowfinger can get Kit Ramsey, hot boy du jour, to commit to the picture.

Kit Ramsey (the first of Eddie Murphy's roles) says no but with tremendous bravado that includes a speech that goes from Shakespeare to spear chucker and covers most celebrity neuroses somewhere in the course of his rantings.

Bowfinger decides to shoot the film anyway, stealing shots of Kit as he goes about his daily routine and putting the picture together around this stolen footage. With a crew of fringe player,who all do double duty (screenwriter/receptionist or cameraman/driver) he is determined to make his dream come true.

Bowfinger and his mates hire a Ramsey look-alike named Jif to stand in for Ramsey. Murphy's nerdy Jif is as funny as movie star Kit. His nasally white boy voice, squints and the braces make Jif into some overgrown black Anthony Michael Hall from the Valley.

All this talent is pulled together fluently by director Frank Oz, who doesn't let either Martin or Murphy get too far out on a limb -- as they both do on occasion.

But Bowfinger belongs to Steve Martin, who is giving us the straight dope about Hollywood as he amuses himself. One of the great running gags of the picture is the increasing dedication of the crew. Recruited at the border amidst a hail of bullets, they quickly move on to discussing Kubrick and Coppola in Spanish and progress to highly technical discussions. The bit is funny and simultaneously demonstrates the international, universal appeal of the movies and Hollywood's combative relationship with unions.

As Bowfinger charts the meteoric rise of Daisy, (It-girl Heather Graham) an enthusiastic girl from Ohio who wants to be a star and earns her stardom the old-fashioned way, Martin slips in an old Hollywood joke about the prestige of writers. As she "climbs" to the top, getting wiser by the day, she ever so briefly reminds us of the Polish starlet.

Have you heard the one about the Polish starlet? If you haven't, Bowfinger will let you in on the joke.

Copyright 2000 Ad Media Inc.