Bowfinger
by Derek Neff

It's every producer's dream: a chance to produce a movie based on that rarest of all commodities, a great script. Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin), long on ambition and short on both money and talent, is convinced he has found that great script: a sci-fi blockbuster written by his accountant entitled Chubby Rain. (The aliens bond with raindrops, you see, making the rain, yes, chubby.) In truth the whole project is a misguided disaster-in-the-making, but Bowfinger and his crew (a grab-bag of various Hollywood types, each one of whom we get to know well enough to love and laugh at) just want to make a movie, any movie, using any means necessary. All they really need now is a big star.

Enter Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy), action-movie superstar. Kit turns down the part almost instantly, but that doesn't discourage Bowfinger. Bowfinger's solution: shoot the film anyway, starring Kit Ramsey; just don't let him know he's being filmed. (This does wonders for Kit's already-paranoid tendencies.) To fill in the scenes, Bowfinger hires Jiff, a naÔve dufus who looks more or less like Kit from the back (also played with much affection by Murphy) for the long- and medium-length shots.

Steve Martin has written his best screenplay since Roxanne, and the pairing of Martin with Eddie Murphy, which in retrospect is so obvious you wonder why no one has thought of it before, is perfect. Everything in Bowfinger works the way it should. You love the absurdity of the situation, the Hollywood in-jokes, the misunderstands among the various characters. The movie's humor hits you like a physical compulsion: this is a very, very funny movie. As a bonus, you really start to like these people, messed-up as they are. Bowfinger as a character has all the tenacity that Ed Wood had before him, and maybe even less of a clue as to how to make a film; nevertheless, you want him to succeed. Eddie Murphy's protean ability to play multiple roles at once doesn't seem as gimmicky as it usually does: both Kit and Jiff are played with affectionate brilliance, and after awhile I didn't even think about the fact they were being played by the same person.

Copyright 2000 Ad Media Inc.