director
Frank Oz
screenwriter
Steve Martin
producer
Brian Grazer
cinematographer
Ueli Steiger
music
David Newman
editor
Richard Pearson
cast
Steve Martin (Bobby Bowfinger)
Eddie Murphy (Kit Ramsey/Jiff)
Heather Graham (Daisy)
Christine Baranski (Carol)
Jamie Kennedy (Dave)
Barry Newman (Kit's Agent)
Adam Alexi-Malle (Afrim)
Terence Stamp (Terry Stricter)
Robert Downey Jr. (Jerry Renfro)
mpaa rating: PG-13
running
time: 97m
u.s.
release: August 13,
1999
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other frank
oz films
reviewed on this website:
- in
& out
- the
score
- the
stepford wives (2004)
|
Steve
Martin has to eat, so every couple of years he lends his face
(and not much else) to a Sgt.
Bilko or an Out-of-Towners.
Those aren't real Steve Martin films; the genuine articles are
the ones he writes himself. Martin had a hand in writing some
of his earlier comedies, but it wasn't until Roxanne in
1987 that he sat down and hammered out a script on his own; the
result was a graceful promotion, a step up from slapstick to
more subtle and character-driven comedy. (In essence, as a writer-actor,
Martin is like Albert Brooks without the self-loathing.) His
subsequent scripts, most notably L.A. Story, have been
fine enough to make many of us wish Martin would type "Fade
in" and "Fade out" more often.
Bowfinger, which Martin wrote, finds him in ideal circumstances.
He's working with Frank Oz (Little Shop of Horrors, Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels), the only director aside from Carl Reiner
who really knows what to do with Martin. He's surrounded by a
dependable comic ensemble of familiar and unfamiliar faces. He's
tackling the subject of moviemaking, always fertile soil for
farce. And he's working with Eddie Murphy (in not one but two
roles), a historic pairing that's all the more satisfying for
being in a good movie. (Sgt. Bilko united Martin and Dan
Aykroyd for the first time on the big screen, but blew it.)
Except for a few frantic moments, the character Martin has written
for himself -- Bobby Bowfinger, ambitious and luckless movie
producer -- is almost a straight man. Bowfinger has gotten his
hands on an action script -- Chubby Rain, a nonsensical
alien-attack thing that he thinks is perfect for Hollywood's
reigning star, Kit Ramsey (Murphy). Problem is, a star of Kit's
magnitude wouldn't piss on Bowfinger if he were on fire. So Bowfinger
devises a sneak-attack strategy -- guerrilla filmmaking as a
covert operation. He'll shoot the movie around Kit, catching
footage of a baffled Kit interacting with the movie's cast, and
use a dorky lookalike -- Jiff, also played by Murphy -- as a
stand-in.
Martin and Aykroyd looked ill at ease together in Sgt. Bilko.
Trapped inside the idiot plot, they knew they were better than
the material. By contrast, Martin and Murphy seem absolutely
natural together. Mostly, the team-up is Bowfinger and Jiff (the
producer has limited access to Kit), and Jiff brings out a weird
gentleness in both Murphy and Martin. Bowfinger doesn't
have tons of big laughs (though it does offer a few); it has
a lot of soft, affectionate laughs rooted in the way the characters
interact. Heather Graham, for instance, drops into the movie
as an eager ingenue who's more than meets the eye, and Martin
and the other actors work with her so comfortably that she gives
perhaps the first good performance I've seen from her.
Bowfinger isn't really about making movies. It's about
being in the movie business -- finding a home there. Bowfinger
doesn't want to make movies; he wants to have made them, and
he wants the status of getting big stars to be in his movies.
For Martin, Bowfinger is the essence of Hollywood, which cares
more about making deals than making movies. A low-budget outsider
like Bowfinger should be concentrating on pulling together small
projects within his means; instead, he's shooting for an alien
epic starring the world's biggest action hero, on the kingly
budget of $2,184. Bowfinger is a showcase for wit, and
it's a testament to Martin's literary skills that he's incapable
of writing a bad script, even on purpose: Even the forlorn Chubby
Rain, with its surreal scenes of cops melting and high-heeled
women intoning "You prefer alien love!", looks
more interesting than most of the Kit Ramsey-type stuff we get
every summer. |
