Bowfinger

One of Steve Martin's best movies, and one of Eddie Murphy's best too. This has several laugh out loud moments.

Plot In A Paragraph: Hollywood, today: Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) a down on his luck actor-producer-director, has a script which a friend has written. Completely convinced of its quality, he decides to take a last shot at fame and fortune. A famous producer(Robert Downey Jr) promises him to do it, but there is one condition: Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) Hollywood's number one star, has to be in it. So, Bobby tries his luck with Kit, who rejects him, so he then decides to shoot the film himself. Featuring an aspiring beauty from Ohio (Heather Graham) and Kit Ramsey - who does not even know he's being filmed.

Continuing my plan to watch every Eddie Murphy movie in order, I come to Bowfinger (1999)

Plot In A Paragraph: A low budget filmmaker (Steve Martin) makes a movie with the biggest action star in the world (Murphy) without his knowledge.

For his last movie in the 90's Murphy starred opposite comedy legend Steve Martin and Heather Graham in Frank Oz's under rated Hollywood satire. He plays a big action star and his goofy brother. I remember thinking it was ok when it came out, and then I never watched it again. I enjoyed it so much this morning, I'm probably going to keep it. I laughed out loud a few times. Murphy looks like he is having fun playing dual roles, which he filmed in six weeks between finishing Life and starting Nutty Professor 2. The freeway scene is the funniest thing I have seen in an Eddie Murphy movie for a long time. Incredibly, executives at Universal wanted to cut that scene, because they felt it would be too expensive!! Martin replied he would not cut the funniest scene in the film.

This is probably the last time Steve Martin was funny. Heather Graham plays an actress named Daisy, she is allegedly based on Anne Heche. Like Daisy, Heche is from Ohio, was briefly romantically involved with a significantly older man, Steve Martin. Daisy's last lines about being involved with "the most powerful lesbian in Hollywood" are a reference to Heche's relationship at the time with Ellen DeGeneres. Of the rest of the cast, Christine Baranski and Terrance Stamp are both fun whilst Robert Donwey Jr has three scenes. This was a bad time to be a Downey Jr fan. He was out on parole, but was constantly missing regular drug tests, resulting in him going back to prison. It was at this sentencing he famously said of his addictions "It's like I've got a shotgun in my mouth, my finger on the trigger and I like the taste of gun metal."

Amazingly this is based on a real life story from 1927. A Russian filmmaker, covertly shot footage of Mary Pickford on holiday, and made a full movie, based around what he had.

I remember this opening the same weekend as The Sixth Sense. It got very good reviews, but was not a runaway hit. Which is a shame because it may be the last really funny movie either Murphy or Martin ever starred in.

Bowfinger grossed $66 million at the domestic box office (on a $55 million budget) to end the year, the 35th highest grossing movie of 1999.

After seeing how good the combination of director Frank Oz and actor Steve Martin was in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," I wasn't surprised that the two would make "Bowfinger" interesting, too. It's not the caliber of "Scoundrels," but it's still fun to watch.

Eddie Murphy, as usual, is responsible for a lot of laughs as he plays two characters: this paranoid New Age-type follower and a very nerdy stand-in actor. In both roles, he's effective. Terrence Stamp, meanwhile, does his normal intense job of acting as the leader of a far-out "mind group" that one of Murphy's characters belongs. Heather Graham provides the sex appeal. Few women have made the transition from wholesome country girl to sleazeball in one movie as Graham does here. It's shocking but laughable at the same time, which pretty much describes this odd film. Nice to see Steve Martin back in form, too.

Steve Martin has made some fine comedy movies - 'The Man with two Brains' 'All of Me' 'Dirty Rotten Scoudrels' and 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' to name just few. He has also made some wonderfully touching movies like 'A Simple Twist of Fate' where his acting ability really shows through. Unfortunately he does have a knack of making too many films that are merely mediocre or worse; films like 'Mixed Nuts' 'Sgt. Bilko' 'Bringing down the House' and 'Cheaper by the Dozen'

I am pleased to say that Bowfinger shows us Steve Martin close to his best; he plays the lead role and he also wrote this totally crazy, unbelievable and madcap comedy; and it is genuinely funny for all the right reasons. It is cleverly written and has a really interesting storyline. I thought it was brilliant fun, and well worth watching.

Steve Martin Fans will love this one 7/10

Steve Martin, the funniest man alive in the 80s, lost his way in the 90s with the likes of "Leap Of Faith" and "A Simple Twist Of Fate". Now, after sterling work in David Mamet's "The Spanish Prisoner", Martin's return to writing and acting in straight-up comedy is surprisingly, reassuringly good. "Bowfinger" is a movie about movies, with all the potential for in-jokery and self-indulgence that brings, but for the most part dispenses with the clever-clever, isn't-Hollywood-shallow stuff to deliver laughs.

Martin's Bobby Bowfinger, a struggling producer desperate for a hit before he reaches the 'unemployable' age of 50, hits on the idea of putting action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy) in his new sci-fi film "Chubby Rain" without the star knowing anything about it. Consequently, Bowfinger's inept crew follows Ramsey around in increasingly crazy and surreal fashion, utilising everything from 'Will Work For Food' signs made of foil to cranes mounted on trucks to get the shot they need. When Bowfinger stumbles across a Kit double (Murphy again) who will do anything the director asks including fetch the coffee, he starts to think all his birthdays have come at once. Meanwhile, the neurotic Ramsey, never that stable to begin with, begins to lose it altogether as he becomes convinced that sex-crazed pod people are stalking him.

It's a simple plot and, while the script throws a few barbs at Hollywood, it's played mainly for big laughs - and gets them. Heather Graham is spot-on as the ingenue literally just off the bus from Ohio who is prepared to sleep with anyone to get longer scenes, and Jamie Kennedy is all laconic wit as Bowfinger's long-suffering assistant. Really, though, it's Martin and Murphy's show. The original wild and crazy guy shows he hasn't lost all his manic energy in the title role, nor his wit with the sharp script. Surprisingly enough, though, the standout performance is Murphy's; he is brilliant as both the paranoid, highly-strung Kit and his dumb-but-sweet double Jiff. This might even be a career-best.

It's simple, lightweight and throwaway of course, but comedies that try to SAY something, even if they're good, often just don't make you laugh that much. Bowfinger will.